He concluded there was little reason for the New Haven Register or the Middletown Press to pretend to cover national news, or do its own wire editing, or to pay business-news wire services. He figured out that he would rather be paid to carry national business news than pay to produce it. So he did a deal with The Street, which now provides national business news content for the papers and the sites. The Street sells the related ads and pays Journal Register a revenue share, based on traffic. It’s not a lot of revenue, but it has reversed the money flow.
Here’s what the newspaper business sounds like: the modestly talented son of the founder can generate double-digit margins based on little more than the happy accident that there are people who like football and buy cars living within 30 miles of his house. That’s the newspaper business, or at least it was until recently.
…the new media ecosystem often feels like one big collective story where the “news” is a best-fit line between different outlying points of absurdity, first-person narrative, and “expert” speculation.
I mean starting something yourself, pursuing your external obsessions out of your internal compulsion, drafting allies when you can and going it alone when you have to, living at the limits of your skills and wits—I mean, who cares if you’re in a cave? You are The God Damn Batman.
Journalists need to become social by sparking conversation with people whose hobbies, work, ideas or interests make them natural audiences, and then find ways for their stories to enrich the conversation.
