There are still two distinct views of what’s going on here. Felix Salmon recently made the optimistic case in Politico Magazine (another excellent launch). Salmon argues that the boom in data-based journalism exemplified by Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, and David Leonhardt’s Upshot Project at The New York Times holds real promise. He points out that this kind of substantive, non-ideological “wonk” journalism creates an appealing environment for corporate advertisers. Rather than too much competition in too small a niche, Salmon sees the supply of high-quality journalism creating its own demand. The pessimistic view comes from USA Today columnist and curmudgeon Michael Wolff, who sees a chronic oversupply of digital content. Falling CPMS, he argues, won’t pay the costs of real journalism. Wolff thinks we’re in a kind of race to the bottom, in which more and more traffic becomes less and less valuable. Take The Huffington Post. It’s the biggest news site in the US, it doesn’t pay most of its contributors, and it continues to lose money for AOL.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 14:48:36 +0000
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