Consumer Media

The idea for this blog post came from the reems and reems of online column inches i have come across recently covering hyperlocal. Having an interest in it myself via Cutmedia.com and the first flagship publication Kingsroad.co.uk, i thought i should give my thoughts and allow anybody that is interested to check out the stories I have come across recently.

Recently I went to an event held at Channel 4 by 4ip where they are very keen to try and help young start ups with funding on projects that will help to shape the media industry. Whilst working out if Cutmedia.com could benefit from a partnership with 4ip i met a lecturer from Goldsmiths University called Angela Phillips. She is currently looking for funding with one of her projects, which is also focussed on hyperlocal, although that is all she would tell me!

We discussed the opportunity of hyperlocal and after a while got on to the topic of journalists and how they need to be innovative and play a more proactive role on the business side of their media work. I certainly think they need to pay more attention to how money and profit is generated as part of their business.

Many people in and around journalism fall in love with the romantic idea of the discipline and fail to understand how money and their wages are paid, which i think is  very dangerous. For them journalism is firstly about holding people in power to account, getting a scoop before anybody else and producing killer articles that demostrate the written skills they were born with and secondly a business. I think that this is naive,  especially in the light of the redundancies that have happen across the industry over the last year or so.

There are many ways in which publishers can generate revenue for their businesses and i expect that they will keep evolving over time as the publishing industry reinvigorates itself. The main task publishers face is to create robust products that can pay for for editorial so journalists can go and hold people in power to account, get that scoop and show us all what great writers they are.

Content alone does not pay the wages and the quicker they learn that the better.

New business models for journalism is something that has been discussed in the following articles:

• http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/11/01/the-future-of-journalism-is-entrepreneurial – Jeff jarvis
• http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/blog/?p=1264 – Unlimitedmagazine.com
• http://www.groundreport.com/Media_and_Tech/The-Hyperlocal-News-Market-Key-Players-and-What-Th/2910236 – Rachel Stern

• George Monbiot: Local newspapers are dying – but are they worth saving? (blogs.journalism.co.uk)