I'm back from Rhode Island!!

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Sheila

Hmmm, you have me intrigued. I will come back to see more!

Sheila,
This whole field is new to me. How will Rick, Jim and Jill get paid for their work. Is it the plan that they will be able to make as much or almost as much money monetizing news and information ass in a traditional newsroom job? It would appear on first read, that individuals going down this alternative path would have to be well versed in different modalities of the news business and it appears a certain flare for the technology available would be a must.

Since my field is education, I wonder how well colleges and universities are preparing the next generation of news reporters for the internet and beyond.
MK

Being in my late 20's this just seems to make so much sense to me. It's smart of these 3 to adjust to what will become the medium for all news and entertainment. I've seen a lot of friends who work in Magazines and Books loose there jobs recently and it's no surprise that there is downsizing due to more content on the web.
Really excitied to see the rest of the Rhode Island piece!
Thanks for the blog!

Sheila:

It is absolutely amazing how far-reaching the whole downsizing concept has been. I never would have guessed the impact it has had on the media - who would have known. I look forward to the rest of your Rhode Island piece.

DTB

I live in a town that recently lost their daily paper after nearly one hundred years. To fill the void of no local news coverage there are a number of individuals attempting to publish daily emails or publish blogs.

It is apparent to me that unfortunatly all of these efforts are struggling financially. Several of the newsletters and blogs appear to be doing the news purely as a hobby or service but several are also trying to make their service financiall viable. The largest of the blogs uses ads and coupons to support their program, but at least at the present time there is certainly not enough volume advertising wise to believe that it is financially even breaking even for its web costs, say nothing of any remueration for the writers. This is particularly sad because I think many of the bloggers at this site are exceptionally fine writers. I wish they were being rewarded for their efforts financially but based upon the advertising volume, it just can't be happening.

Your blogs look at various financial models used in the news business is certainly on target, but the fact that it shows three different models is a testimonial to the fact that no one has come up with a sure fire plan.

Don't be a Sheila... You need to give us the rest of the story! (Just kidding...)

2 items worth 2 cents:

- I assume that your subject (dancing, etc) is working another job to make ends meet. It's not a direct connect, but it reminds me of what someone at a media confab said a few weeks ago: journalists are going to have to several "gigs"
rather than a single job to make ends meet. While they were saying those gigs are with different media organizations, I'll extend it to a reporter taking a side job to pay the bills. It's tough out there.


- 2nd point: Also at the conference, there was talk about various funding (monetizing schemes) for online ventures (startups and "traditional" outlets). One that will be interesting to watch is GlobalPost. They feature foreign news, don't have the overhead a newspaper does and are using a NPR/PBS style "membership" payment system (most of the news is free, available to all, but if you want to buy in as a customer/consumer, you get a few perks).

Like I said, interesting concept. We'll see how it works. Their guy was optimistic about things, but he also may have been the person to say his staffers have "gigs" with other outfits as they report the world's news (GlobalPost pays about $250 for each story...).

Those are the thoughts. Let me know when the full story goes live.

Joe

*don't be a TEASE is what I meant to write...