Let’s pause and look at trends that have emerged over the last few years: How will they affect the digital newsmedia industry? First, we’ll try and list a few undisputed facts. Then we’ll drift towards conclusions bordering the uncharted territory of predictions. It’s worth the risk.
The web fuel problem. The internet economic engine isn’t firing on all cylinders. For online news, that’s an understatement. The primary source of income, advertising, has proven itself unable to sustain ambitious journalism. There might be exceptions here and there, a few news organizations have found their way to profitability, but they flourish in niche beats. For example, Politico, which covers Washington DC’s arcana — but it relies on hybrid model (web and print).
Others benefits from a powerful mothership such as New York Times (NYSE: NYT) Digital’s DealBook on finance: with a 2.5 to 3m unique visitors a month, this eight journalists operation could break even if it were granted a separate P&L. (DealBook also brings intangible but highly valuable status to the NYT in its fight against the Wall Street Journal.) But these are specialized products.
Observers mention the Huffington Post, with its presumed 10m UV/month, as the prototype for a popular internet news success. To me, the HuffPo is not a journalistic product per se. Taking third party content, the HuffPo builds a clever participatory mash-up, with a focus on juicy stuff. The whole thing is staged it in such a way (splashy editing, pictures, headlines) that it triggers loads of prattling
This article originally appeared in The Guardian.

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