Idea Lab

Future of Local News About More Than Paid Content

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

During an otherwise mundane story about Microsoft's recent decision to offer a free, web-based version of its Office suite of products, I was struck by this sentence in an Associated Press story: With Office 2010, Microsoft must decide how much software it can give away online without undermining its lucrative desktop software business. If it doesn't make the right calculation, the software maker could find itself in the same position as newspapers that gave online content away and now are struggling to replace print revenue. That second line is almost a throwaway, written with no attribution. That means that the...

• August 13, 2009
• 19 comments

Saving Journalism, One Idea at a Time

by Dan Gillmor
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

True/Slant's hybrid model (reporters find their own advertising sponsors) will save journalism! Or not. The Huffington Post is creating tomorrow's business model for journalism! Or not... Northwestern University's "computer nerds" will save journalism! Really? Ultra-cheap netbooks could save the media industry! Umm... Journalism Online LLC will save newspapers (!) by helping them charge for what they've been essentially giving away for 50 years. Could be.The iPhone will revolutionize mobile journalism! Or not. The recent panic over the demise of newspapers has led to a predictable flurry of omigod, now-what speculation. We're being treated to one hype-filled piece after another about...

• June 11, 2009
• 5 comments

Bringing Entrepreneurial Thinking to Journalism

by Dan Gillmor
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

(Note: I wrote this initially for PR Week magazine. What follows is slightly updated.) A cliche of business holds that good ideas are a dime a dozen; it's hard work and investment capital that turn them into businesses. As with most cliches, this one has a solid foundation of truth. But something has changed, and it has profound meaning for the future of media and communications, including journalism, entertainment and PR. Digital technologies are dramatically reducing the cost of entree for creating new products and services, and, in the case of digital media, those costs can be close to zero....

• March 7, 2008
• 1 comment