If there’s anything I write about or comment on that is sure to draw a hot and negative response, it’s the insistence that journalists start to get in tune with their true market value. It’s not that I don’t see a huge social value to the work they do. I credit journalists with keeping our democracy alive. But they’ve never been paid by democracy; they get paid by a business model.
My point is twofold:
- Journalists have always been part of someone else’s business model. But it’s generally only in times like this, when the business models are under fire, that journalists are compelled to recognize it.
- While traditional media models are under siege, journalists themselves are becoming part of the solution — developing new models and new approaches to paying the true cost for news. (For example, check out Spot.us and MedCityNews.)
Today’s e-mail brought an item from one of my favorite blogs, Seth Godin’s Blog. He usually has something insightful to say about the way the world works. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen his blog address the media world directly.
His message (you should read it yourself; it’s short) is simply this: Journalists can be measured for the interest their stories generate — as evidenced by a Washington Post columnist who was let go because his blog posts didn’t generate enough traffic. In every other industry, people’s performance is measured against specific objectives.
It’s happening now with journalists — bringing them into intimate business contact for whatever business model employs them.
Coming face to face with reality can be a painful experience, but in the working world there is really nothing more important.
A not-for-profit trial balloon has been floated (
I couldn’t find the study myself and no link was provided, so I’m taking 
BPA is facing obsolescence at an astonishing rate. If BPA is a dinosaur, then the killer meteor has already hit the Earth and the toxic cloud of extinction is on its way. Holding rates will make as much difference to the organization’s future as putting on a sweater.
TV — than they did with media that is primarily ad-supported. 
Two large, orange bags just appeared on my front porch the other day. Each contained several pounds of phone books. There was the Yellow Pages, the White Pages, the Business-to-Business Yellow Pages and the Yellow Pages Supplement. Two complete sets of them.
OK, I confess that having a residential phone book is a small comfort (though I still don’t remember the last time I used one). But if you’re running a business I wouldn’t spend much on Yellow Pages advertising. No matter how small or local the business might be, your resources would be better spent building an affordable little website and making sure it’s listed on every free online directory you can find.
rtising as a way of subsidizing other content and, in some cases, they actually like it.
