Can Online Revenue Support Original Journalism?

AdAge: NEWS IS EXPENSIVE OFFLINE, BUT HOW CAN IT STAY FREE ONLINE? - This is a very important question, I think, and a hurdle a lot of us independent new media publishers are facing - how to pay for the content? (No, I don't think the BackFence model will pan out. You need paid people, imho...) In any case, AdAge puts together some numbers, but they seem to end with only questions and no answers. (Registration required) (Thanks to CyberJournalist for the refer...)

From the article:

Print editions of American newspapers earn between $500 and $900 per consumer a year from a combination of direct circulation revenues and indirect revenues from advertising, according to Crosbie's analysis. "If American newspapers continue to lose 2% to 16% of their print circulation each year, they will need to gain 40% to 1,600% more Web site users just to stay even," he said.

One wonders: If the newspaper companies fail to gain those Web eyeballs, how much will pure-play Internet companies have to pay to produce the depth and breadth of content that the newspaper companies have been churning out? Who will foot the bill for news? Google? Yahoo? Consumers? Here’s hoping someone does.

Someone will. Of that, I'm sure. I just don't think it will be the big media companies in power today. And I hope that it won't be new behemoths like Google and Yahoo. I hope it will be the consumers and small, independent operations that will foot the bill for content creation in the future.

Your thoughts?

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