At the highest level, journalism is the business of gathering and disseminating information. For a long time, newspapers had a monopoly on the information business, which allowed them to dominate advertising.

But now, with the emergence of platforms like Facebook, newspaper advertising is becoming more and more obsolete. Internet companies can reach more people for less money than newspapers ever could.

Many people are calling the struggling news business a democratic crisis. While yes, news is absolutely integral to a functioning democracy, it’s still called the news business for a reason.

News organizations and journalists are quick to point at external factors impacting the industry, but they rarely look inward and consider how they need to innovate and adapt. When journalists encourage people to support the news they care about, they’re actually perpetuating the very problem that’s killing the industry.

Customers aren’t responsible for saving a struggling business, it’s the business’s responsibility to create enough value so that consumers are willing to pay. That’s true for news as well, because after all, it’s still a business.

People will pay for high-quality content that adds value to their lives.

“I think news organizations must provide news reports that create customer loyalty — loyalty that is strong enough to make customers willing to pay for the value of the report,” Lou Ureneck, a journalism professor at Boston University said in an email.

Aileen Gallagher, an associate professor in the magazine department at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications said for the last decade or so the news industry has been focusing on chasing scale, or trying to create content that gets a lot of clicks.

“I’m not sure how long it’s going to take the newspaper industry to back off of chasing traffic, but the sooner they do it, the better,” Gallagher said.

Susie Teuscher | Digital Design Editor

BuzzFeed is the perfect example of an organization that focused on chasing scale. In 2018, BuzzFeed generated more than $300 million in revenue, but still wasn’t profitable. That’s not a democratic crisis, it’s a poor business model.

Producing quality journalism and running a good business aren’t mutually exclusive. There are companies in the media business that are innovating and discovering new ways to make money.

The Ringer, a sports and pop culture website founded by Bill Simmons, generated $15 million in revenue from advertisement sales on its podcasts in 2018 and is profitable, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Gallagher said the future of journalism is small and niche.

“As a media company, the best option is to run very lean and find a hole in the market you can fill with a unique product that is targeted at an audience that values that product enough to pay for it,” she said.

Paying for news just for the sake of it will have the opposite outcome of what the news business is looking for — a sustainable business model. Discovering sustainable and profitable business models requires failure and hardship. People seem to forget that when it comes to journalism.

The conversation needs to change from pay for the news you read to news organizations must figure out how to create more value for their readers.

Daniel Strauss is a senior finance major and public communications minor. His column appears biweekly. He can be reached at dstrauss@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @_danielstrauss.

Published on February 10, 2019 at 7:57 pm