Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Journalism on the Internet

Some publications like the Wall Street Journal are creating nice public previews for their subscriber-only content. You get the gist, but you don't get the story. The Wall Street Journal is a very large umbrella under which a few select journalists can hide from the exploitive Internet. It's a good model to follow, and it represents the future of journalism very well. News will no longer be generalized and aggregated in one place. Instead, it will be segmented into categories based on relevant topics, each with its own special umbrella.

Journalists who specialize in pets or who specialize in food will be invited to reside safely under their respective topical umbrellas of online subscriber-only content, a kind of magazine format for subscribing users. The online specialty magazine will then sell the best articles to larger aggregation services that provide a service to users who would rather subscribe to a general news format.

If you're good enough at writing and you have a huge audience following you, you will arrive to find a comfortable work environment with benefits and a great salary, eventually, maybe. But you will also find yourself at the whims of an editor or manager, who will dictate your work activities. The solution is free agency. Produce your own stuff on the Internet and create your own subscriber income through PayPal.com merchant services. You will also need to create a website with some sort of subscriber management system. I expect to see such a service available soon for independent authors who want to be their own bosses.

After you have your subscriber service set up, you will need to join Facebook and post some of your works either a few days late, or partially somehow, sort of like the Wall Street Journal.