BuzzMachine

The important thing here is that “Reuters … gets high value out of its news in stages.” They monetize news in multiple markets with distinct value propositions. But, the average “newspaper” generally attempts to make all of its money with a single product — general consumer news provided at a leisurely pace.

The difference here is that Reuters is in the “news” business rather than the “newspaper” business. Their focus is on content in contexts rather than just on the medium used to distribute content. They seek to serve “interests” and satisfy needs rather than simply “publish a paper…”

We must remember that “Reuters” isn’t just “Reuters” anymore. It is now “Thomson Reuters.” Thus, they do much more than just monetize the “tip-of-the-iceberg” news that newspapers rely on. Thomson Reuters is also one of the biggest providers of the *often very expensive* and hyper-focused “deep-news” demanded by the professional and special interest markets.

The newspaper folk should look *very* carefully at the fact that “about 2% of Reuters’ revenue” comes from ad-supported consumer news… What they should be learning is that the revenue opportunities in deep, focused, fee-based news products are excellent. By putting more focus into developing deep-news products, today’s newspapers would be able to subsidize the cost of consumer news publishing.

bob wyman

“in my estimation” — the slightest acknowledgment that the pay wall just may work.

whatever we all think of murdoch’s microsoft move, no one knows for sure what the effect will be and, for now at least, the most confident among us aren’t. my estimation: lovin’ the show.

Andy Freeman asks about the long tail –

Yes, he is right that breaking news/milliseconds count is the opposite of the long tail. That is not the content I was referring to.

Here is the problem news organizations face…

Serving a niche audience with high value content can be extremely profitable but its value degrades rapidly as the content leaves that niche and is delivered to a general audience in a commoditized form.

Jarvis’ example of Reuters concerned timeliness: the niche audience was in high finance; the added value of the information derived from its status as breaking news.

Bob Wyman’s examples from Science, Law and Governance concerned expertise: the niche audiences were in the various professions; the added value of the information was what he calls deep news.

The “long tail” question that I was ruminating on was the problem for either news organization — Thomson Reuters or professional publishers. How do they approach the consumer news part of their operation, repurposing their niche journalism for a general audience? The audience for each individual piece of content is small but their online archives are vast and searchable — and so in aggregate, but only in aggregate, this long tail is potentially profitable in an ad-supported, non-subscription model.

I agree with Wyman that deep news organizations are liable to have more success at monetizing their archives than breaking news organizations. His suggestion that MainStreamMedia — my term, not his — should seek out niche professional publishers for rewrites and summaries of deep news for their general audiences seems sound.

As for Reuters, I argue that their pathetic 2% of revenues derived from ad-supported, consumer news, speaks to the superficiality of their breaking content. The point I was making was that breaking news organizations are lazy, generally speaking, about repurposing content for their long tail, not realizing that information that had been most valuable by virtue of its timeliness tends to have least residual value, in inverse proportion.

Thus the type of story that Reuters should headline in its ad-supported consumer news phase should be different from the ones that it made most money from in their millisecond phase. As Jarvis likes to say, journalism online has to be organized not by timeliness but by subject matter — not by story but by topic.

omg.. this is really inspiring! been blogging for a year or so but it was only now that i thought i should monetize my blog and be serious with it.. thanks for this post. Keep blogging. Looking forward to reading your next post.