| It's clear we're seeing a revolution in funding models for media companies of all kinds from Spotify to Motion Picture/TV Producers and Journalism/Journalism-like enterprises. The core commodity of these businesses used to be Information, the Tapes/Records/Printed Newspapers. Now that such information has been quite literally made free by the advent of digitization along with the internet, these entities need to find new ways to create scarcity from which to profit. Some respectful ways that the times may do this: 'Private' Investigative Journalism: Open an office where companies can pay their skilled, resourceful journalists to promptly investigate a lead. Ideally the results would be published afterwards but I don't see a reasonable mechanism for enforce that. Physical Installations: Use immersive media to create a multi-dimensional storytelling experience. Sell tickets if it's 'fun' enough, or seek corporate partnerships that benefit from this message who want to sponsor. Sell Premium Access of 'specialty' analysis with SLAs to other Corporations: Reuters sells Refinitiv/Westlaw, Bloomberg has their Terminals... Publicly publish the data every hour but within 50ms to paying organizations. I don't see it as my job to find a business model for these entities, but I do se a bunch of opportunity in B2B relationships. I hope more knowledgeable folks can do better... I think it's a sad but telling sign the so-called leadership at these collectives is dedicating effort to the paradoxical, Sisyphean task of stopping casual readership from accessing/sharing the content they worked so hard to create instead of seeking new avenues that exist in abundance. As others commenters have noted, having a constant, public and freely auditable record is the only way to keep these entities honest. |