What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism

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Columbia Journalism School | Tow Center for Digital JournalismTable of ContentsIntroduction 1Chapter 1 7News From Everywhere: The Economics of Digital JournalismChapter 2 21Traffic Patterns: Why Big Audiences Aren’t Always ProfitableChapter 3 39Local and Niche Sites: The Advantages of Being SmallChapter 4 57The New New Media: Mobile, Video and Other Emerging PlatformsChapter 5 69Paywalls: The Price Tag for InformationChapter 6 87Aggregation:‘Shameless’ – and EssentialChapter 7 97Dollars and Dimes: The New Costs of Doing BusinessChapter 8 111New Users, New Revenue: Alternative Ways to Make MoneyChapter 9 125Managing Digital: Audience, Data and DollarsConclusion 135Executive Summary 139Acknowledgements 143The Authors 145
Columbia Journalism School | Tow Center for Digital JournalismIntroductionFew news organizations can match the setting of the Miami Herald. The paper’sheadquarters is perched on the edge of Biscayne Bay, offering sweeping views ofthe islands that buffer the city of Miami from the Atlantic Ocean. Pelicans andgulls float near the building; colorful cruise ships ply the waters a few miles away.And Miami Herald executives long held some of the best views in the city,from the fifth floor of the company’s headquarters.Not any longer.The Herald, like most U.S. daily newspapers, has faced severe financial troublesin recent years, suffering deep cuts in the newsroom and other departments. So,in one of many efforts to raise revenue, executives attached a billboard to the eastside of the Herald building, completely obscuring the bay views of many newspaperemployees, including the publisher.The benefits of the billboard are obvious: the low six figures in annual revenue,according to a Herald executive, or enough to pay the salaries of a fewjunior reporters.The irony is obvious as well, for the advertiser buying the space is Apple—thecompany that now controls a commerce and publishing system crucial to thefuture of the news business. And the product being advertised on the Herald’swall is the iPad, a device that is both disruptive and helpful to media economics.Indeed, the two companies provide a way to see the destruction and creationin the media business over the past decade. At the end of March 2001, the stockmarket valued the Herald’s parent company, Knight-Ridder, at almost preciselythe same amount as Apple: $3.8 billion.Ten years later, Apple’s valuation is more than $300 billion. And Knight-Ridderno longer exists as an independent company. 1Introduction 1
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