Guiding media innovators toward solutions, around the world
The help is welcome, but the donor can pull the plug at any time A common stuggle for digital news startups is that they depend on grants to fund operations or to fund special projects chosen by the donor organization. So they suffer the uncertainty of whether they can pay their staff and continue providing […]
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If you build it, they won’t come; you have to persuade them why your work has value Why write about “reasons for optimism” when so much is going wrong in our politics, economy, and environment? Optimism gives us confidence that we can make things better. As I like to say, it’s another day of opportunity. […]
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Public-service mission fuels business models in Africa, SE Asia, and Latin America What follows is an edited excerpt of the Business Models chapter of SembraMedia’s Inflection Point International study of 201 digital native media in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Read the full report here–also in Spanish and Portuguese. It is republished under Creative Commons […]
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Focus on your users’ needs, their problems, their values, their tastes Any news media entrepreneur who is trying to create a sustainable business model should keep these three things in mind: Build a media community, not an audience Focus on relationships, not scale Measure engagement, not page views What follows is, first, my message during […]
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One of my most popular blog posts from 7 years ago is still surprisingly relevant This article first appeared on my website in 2014 and it remains one of the most popular. The revenue sources are still relevant, and so are the business principles behind them. For this post, I’ve updated some of the text […]
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A popular blog post from 2018: how to think like a businessperson Author’s note: This month, I am re-publishing some popular posts. This article first appeared on my website in 2018 and is one of the most popular from the past decade. Many of the circulation and revenue numbers in the text and the links […]
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Giving users a choice can increase members, subscribers Lately I have seen several examples of news publications letting users decide the amount they pay for the information they receive. The goals, strategies, and tactics are different in each case. But one of them might be right for your news organization. In each case the model […]
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