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April 8, 2008

Gadflies? What About a Business Model?

Jay Rosen asks a much more interesting and important question about this revolutionary (evolutionary?) moment in Journalism: What's the business model? In other words, who will pay for journalism, i.e. pay for people to do the hard, day-to-day work of giving citizens the information they need to be free and self-governing. He says:

I think it’s possible we will lose some of the public goods that newspapers under the old subsidy system were able to bring forward. People ask me about this all the time. (Because I’m a press critic, a scholar in journalism, and I write a blog about these issues.) When I tell them there’s no answer at the moment a strange look comes across their faces. A social problem with no answer? Is that even allowed? Of course the historically accurate fact that there’s no answer makes it an exciting moment in news. The fact that we could lose something makes it somewhat urgent.



Posted by acline at April 8, 2008 10:08 AM | | Spotlight