Nieman Foundation at Harvard
— Henry Copeland argues that the doom-mongering predictions of a 40-percent drop in advertising revenue…might be optimistic. Pay attention to this line:
With supply doubling and demand stagnant or down, advertising prices are headed to zero for any property that doesn’t deliver VERY compelling value to advertisers.
That’s the key I’ve repeated over and over: Even if the amount of what we would call “journalism” continues to grow, there’s no way it will grow faster than the total amount of content. And while the advertising market gives some added value to high-quality content, that equation fundamentally pulls advertising prices to zero.
— Speaking of: A Microsoft exec argues that “scale is more important that ever” online — to make money, you have to generate traffic in the gazillions. Of course, someone from Microsoft would say that, but Hearst’s Lincoln Millstein has argued something similar.
— Ryan Sholin writes about using wikis in news.
