There’s no question that the business model of news has to change. The demise of print journalism – largely dependent on plummeting advertising revenues – has been well documented and each week brings news of more layoffs and closures.
Against this backdrop it’s always interesting to hear of new business models being trialled – the subscription models of the FT and WSJ, the use of micropayments or the ‘community funded reporting’ model of spot.us where readers directly pay for investigative journalism they want to see carried out.
True/Slant: Journalism Meets Social Media – Meets Entrepreneurship – Meets Advertisers
A new addition to the ‘web journalism’ family is True/Slant which has received a fair bit of coverage itself. Run by a former news editor from America Online, the site has launched with 65 journalists reporting on everything from business to politics to culture and sports.
So far, so standard.
However, True/Slant has adopted a number of interesting, if not groundbreaking, approaches that are worthy of a closer look.
Journalist Entrepreneurs
The contributors on True/Slant come with form; many have previously (or still) write for publications like Rolling Stone, Time magazine, the FT and the New York Times. The salary paid by True/Slant however, is modest – but the intent is to foster contributors’ entrepreneurial skills and turn them into mini publishers within the framework of the site.
Each contributor is given their own section within the site which readers can, in effect, subscribe to. Contributors are tasked with building a readership for their content and in turn are paid a percentage of the advertising and sponsorship from their pages and, potentially, an equity stake in the business. They can also arrange their own advertising or sponsorship for their pages.
It’s a fine idea. Sites like Trendhunter (and countless others) have used a similar revenue share model to attract amateur and professional contributors with tremendous success.
Tying compensation to revenue generation (i.e. traffic) encourages the kind of active participation that new media models demand. It can, however, also encourage ‘link bait’ style content designed to do little more than hit the front pages of Digg (although the same could easily be said of sensationalist print journalism).
The real issue however is the continued reliance on advertising and sponsorship as the sole revenue model. Online advertising is growing but like its print equivalent has been hit by the economic downturn.
Moreover, with rare exception, very few online news publications have been able to make an advertising-led model work.
Online Advertorial or Something New?
In a move that’s sure to raise a few eyebrows, True/Slant will be inviting sponsors to contribute content to the site in the same fashion as journalist contributors. Advertisers will be able to run their own blogs and build a following on the site – although their content will be marked as advertising throughout.
Advertorial in print has been around for as long as advertising and various models have been played with in online environments (most notably sponsored posts in blogs). True/Slant’s take will certainly appeal to advertisers who are already investing heavily in custom publishing and content marketing strategies and, as such, could be a winner.
Provided, of course, that advertisers can create content which is of equal interest to that produced by the journalist contributors.
Readers are savvy enough to distinguish impartial coverage from company-created spin – especially when there’s a big ‘advertising’ sticker plastered to the top of it. The question is therefore less about combining the two and more about the quality of the content the advertisers produce – of which True/Slant would seem to have little control or say.
Will it Work?
Who knows. The ‘joint venture’ style relationship with journalists will help keep overheads down and create an incentive for contributors to become marketers of their own content. The ‘advertorial’ style sections should help attract advertisers and sponsors (at least in the short term). Tick. Tick.
The problem however is that True/Slant does little to address the core issues of advertising funded journalism – turning eyeballs into adequate revenues.
For those contributors that do create a following, the rewards will likely be worth the effort – but not every contributor will be willing or able to do so. Not enough eyeballs for their particular brand of content. The small fees paid by True/Slant outisde of any revenue share will help address this point but not solve it – and only add to True/Slant’s cost base.
The advertorial sections should help attract new advertisers – but they will face the same issues. Unless they create content worth reading, readers may simply not read their stuff – and most advertisers are not setup to be mini-publishers.
On balance, True/Slant is an interesting and outwardly well-executed concept. The success or failure of the business will however, come down to the same old issue – attracting sufficient advertising revenues.
For my part, I hope they do.
