The news industry is still scratching around trying to find new ways of making money. Paul Bradshaw offers some ideas in a detailed post on new business models.

The problems are well-known, and while web advertising is rising, online readers are simply not worth as much as print readers. The issue is rethinking business for a Internet age. This means shifting from seeing news as a physical product to seeing journalism as a service, as Bradshaw points out:

The most successful online news operations understand that news is a service, not a product: the BBC’s success is not just in the resources they have allocated, but the way they have done so because of the culture of a public service organisation.

The way to make money, then, is to consider what services can be sold along the news. This is the tough part. Most news outlets are sitting on a wealth of information. After all, this is the business they are in.

The challenge is to identify how that information can be tapped to service a need in the community, and make money from this.


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