The Race for New Business Models in Journalism

With several widely reported newspaper closings, it’s no news that the current business model of journalism is broken.  But its rapid evolution has sparked an interesting discussion about possible solutions. Charlie Rose recently hosted a talk between Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post and Thomas Curley, president and CEO of the Associated Press. It’s a classic battle between developing old media models and creating brand new ones, with the AP arguing that they need to protect the content that’s so costly to produce and HuffPo arguing that building walls around content is like “sticking a finger in the dike.”

Magazines, too, are escalating their search for new funding models. According to a recent NYTimes article, pubs like Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, and People are exploring formerly taboo collaborations with advertisers that blur the editorial/advertorial line by, among other things, featuring advertising on their covers. Similarly, Lexus and Time, Inc. have teamed up to allow readers to curate their own content (both in print and online) across five Time publications in an experiment where Lexus is the sole advertiser in a free magazine.

You can watch the Charlie Rose discussion with Huffington and Curley here.