Idea Lab

Printcasting Launches Paid Ads, Revenue Sharing

by Dan Pacheco
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

We just reached another big milestone on Printcasting with a feature that we think will redefine how publishers perceive and use the service. Starting now, all ads placed with the Printcasting self-serve advertising tool cost $10, an amount that publishers can mark up per publication. In addition, 60% of every ad dollar is shared with publishers through their Paypal accounts, and 30% of every dollar is set aside to share with participating content providers in the future in proportion to how often their content has been used in Printcasts. We've also made it easier for advertisers to place ads in...

• July 15, 2009
• 2 comments

Where the Journalists Aren't

by Lisa Williams
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Where the journalists aren't: the Marketplaces/Drilling Down on Local conference, a gathering of industry execs and venture investors. The "how do we make money on local" question that is generally the conversation ender at journalism confabs is the conversation beginner at this gathering, where the first panels are stocked with venture investors talking about what they will -- and will not fund, and what they expect to get back, and why. The tone -- and the dress code -- are totally different than those you might find at ONA or Poynter. I'm in stealth mode. (Don't tell anyone: I'm wearing...

• March 16, 2009
• 2 comments

Preview the Printcasting Local Ad Tool

by Dan Pacheco
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Tonight is literally the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, so first I want to say Happy New Year to all of you. We've learned a lot since winning a Knight News Challenge grant 9 months ago, and are extremely grateful to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for making it possible for us and so many others to continue to experiment at a time when so many companies are eliminating into their research & development budgets. Even though it's the holidays, the Printcasting team is not slowing down. All we can think about is March...

• December 31, 2008
• 3 comments

Sharing the Same Space: News and Advertising

by Kimberly Sultze
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The Innovation Incubators project is moving into the industry testing phase. Teams of students from seven institutions, Ithaca College, Michigan State, University of Nevada--Las Vegas, St. Michael's College, Western Kentucky, University of Kansas, and Kansas State, worked together to develop three new ideas for community journalism which will be tested in the months ahead. It's a good time to reflect on the project so far and to share one of my observations about what we've discovered during the collaboration process. One of the great challenges for the Innovation Incubator students--undergraduate and graduate alike, and from all institutions--was pitching an innovative...

• July 13, 2008
• 2 comments

Killing Trees and the Future of News Online

by Benjamin Melançon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Seth Godin on the news buiness versus the paper business: Jason wrote in to ask why I thought that the newspaper industry was in a Dip. In my book, I point out that with classified ads disappearing and the web thriving, the days of newspapers as we know them are clearly over. That shouldn't mean the industry is in trouble. In fact, there are more people reading more news every day than ever before--without the cost of printing and distributing a costly piece of newsprint every day. Happy days... But (many of) the people in the industry have built their...

• June 4, 2008
• 7 comments

Can Newspaper Classifieds Be Saved?

by J.D. Lasica
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Steve Outing -- who's been trying to prod the newspaper industry to embrace its digital multidirectional future for the past decade -- asked me what the future holds for newspaper classifieds. He's behind the site ReinventingClassifieds.com, an initiative aimed at bringing experts together to revive newspaper classifieds by finding a new business model that's relevant in the Internet age. I left the Sacramento Bee 12 years ago to work at various Internet startups, and the contrast between newspaper culture and tech startup culture couldn't be more stark. If newspapers are to revitalize their revenue streams in the online medium,...

• May 12, 2008
• 1 comment

Newspapers Struggling Online, Not Just in Print

by Paul Grabowicz
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

As disturbing as the recent numbers on declining print circulation and plunging advertising revenue at newspapers have been, less attention has been paid to ominous signs of a slow-down on the online side as well: - Most newspaper chains reported online revenue growth in single or low double digits this quarter, compared with growth rates of 15-20% or more a year ago. - The amount of time the average visitor spent at most newspaper web sites declined in February compared with a year ago, according to an Editor & Publisher report on Nielsen Online data. E&P reported similar data for...

• May 4, 2008
• 4 comments

How Can Ads Support Community News?

by Mark Glaser
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I'm going to be posting weekly questions here on Idea Lab to spark discussion by the various authors, as well as our community of readers. This week I'd like to follow up on the recent theme of new business models for local news sites. Many small hyper-local community sites start up with Google AdSense ads and other automated, quick ways of bringing in a small revenue stream. Eventually, though, they need to make more money than that, and must turn to local businesses to advertise. But it's difficult to entice small businesses online, as they are more likely to employ...

• March 26, 2008
• 3 comments

Where's the Innovation in Business Models?

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I've been following closely a theme that has developed here in recent days. It began last week with David Sasaki's post about the legacy of the Knight family, continued with Dan Gillmor's call for more entrepreneurial thinking in journalism, and was amplified by J.D. Lasica's call for newspapers to innovate or die. All great thoughts, and worth reading to the word. But I have a particular interest here. As a business reporter at the San Jose Mercury News the past nine years, I've been living at the tragic center of the events being addressed to some degree by each of...

• March 13, 2008
• 17 comments

Advertising and Information Asymmetry Online

by Benjamin Melançon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Mark Andrejevic: Living through the '90s, there was this euphoric set of predictions about the empowering and democratizing capacity of the new medium. I read that against what the current political and economic situation looks like today. [...] What concerns me is the way in which the celebration of the potential so quickly slides into a claim that this potential is being actualized. An interview with the author of iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era. Well worth the read. As long as the funding model for journalism is advertising-based, these issues will frame our work and - in...

• October 31, 2007
• No comments

We Don't Have to Save the Newspaper Industry. We Do Have to Bring "The Press" Across the Digital Divide.

by Jay Rosen
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

At the recent Networked Journalism Summit I referenced a darker argument on the future of online advertising by Doc Searls. Here is where I discuss it. Because I write about the Internet and what it's doing to the press, and follow that story at my blog, I am sometimes asked what I believe the future of newspapers to be. Or, more bluntly, "will newspapers survive?" Very rarely is anyone satisfied with my answer: "I really don't know what's going to happen." (I like that answer, myself.) "... And I don't think anyone does." Not knowing what the model is, we...

• October 16, 2007
• 2 comments