Ad networks can help online news start-ups take first step toward profitability

By Robert Niles, November 19, 2008

Today, I'll be writing about ad-supported news websites, as opposed to subscription-based publications. (We've written about those on OJR before, but they are far rarer to find than ad-supported sites.) Since we're talking start-ups, too, we'll operate under the assumption that you, the publisher, do not have a dedicated ad sales team working for you, pitching your site to potential advertisers.

Let's also stipulate that profitability for a start-up demands publishers to minimize the expense side of the ledger. Initial ad revenue for a news start-up - no matter how well designed - likely will be meager, so going it alone (or with a small partnership) and spending little on development and reporting will help keep expenses manageable.

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The case for independent news sites as profit-makers: 'I think there's a great business model here'

By David Westphal, November 17, 2008

"I think there's a great business model here," said Merrill Brown, a media management and strategy consultant. "If you can get a quality product out there, local advertisers are looking for alternatives… I think there's plenty of evidence of that."

So far, of course, there's little evidence that profitability will reliably follow. Even many operations that talk about being in the black do so with asterisks – the key players aren't drawing a salary, or the site is subsidized with other lines of business, for example. Others argue nonprofits will be the winning models for robust public-service news sites. Only today, a seemingly promising startup in Seattle, Crosscut, announced it was transitioning from a for-profit site to nonprofit status.

But many people say it's not surprising that profits are not there at this point in the innovation cycle, and point to the rapid growth of businesses trying to tease out local advertising dollars. The day of online profits is coming, they say, and for-profit news sites will be best positioned to thrive.

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Training key to helping journalists become comfortable with Web 2.0

By Mike Noe, November 14, 2008

To say the least, 2008 was a far cry from that 1908 DNC. A staff of 150 field journalists covered this year's convention 24 hours a day for five straight days, posting vignettes, photos and video to RockyMountainNews.com. So much content poured into the site at once that we used two scrolling windows on the home page to channel the flow of information. A nurse at a local hospital told me she was glued to the site throughout the week, checking back whenever she could to see the latest updates on protests, celebrities and the delegates.

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Add original functionality to original content to build Web traffic

By Robert Niles, November 12, 2008

But let's not forget, either, some of the advantages that newspapers bring to these markets. Over the next couple weeks, we'll be bringing you blog posts from newspaper website editors whom I've asked to share some of their recent successes. If you a newspaper website editor with a story to share, too, please, feel free. You can post to the site directly, or e-mail me and tell me your story so that I can post it to the site.

Before we get to those stories though... a challenge, if you will.

Newspapers often focus on their newsrooms, and even, sometimes, their sales staffs when looking for strengths that they bring to their local markets. But what about their IT departments?

Great content build traffic for a day. If you want to keep that traffic, you must continue to add new great content. But great functionality builds traffic, too. And keeps it for far longer than content does before it needs to be refreshed.

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The journalism 'priesthood' destroyed?

By Geneva Overholser, November 11, 2008

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