Listening to Leonard Downie, Jr. talk about the changing business model of journalism was very exciting. After reading his article in the Columbia Journalism Review I’m even more intrigued by the challenge of keeping journalism alive as a profitable business.
Today going over business models in my marketing class I began to think about how this applies to journalism. I think journalism is struggling to create new forms of value for its customers but even more than that it seems to struggle to make a profit out of this value. Charging for online content seems to be one recent development to try to address this issue.
I’m expecting to see many newspapers completely cut paper production as the yearly printing costs for the NY Times are the same as buying each reader a kindle. I also think Twitter is the first one of its kind of combine social media and journalism, that trying alternative formats and models will be very successful.
Seeing how media companies work to collaborate and compete with other companies has been fascinating as a business student. I want to take a closer look at the promotion and distribution models of media outlets and learn as much as I can about a very unique business model.
