Lovely video; shame about the business model

Explore Harvard's Nieman network Nieman Fellowships Nieman Lab Nieman Reports Nieman Watchdog Nieman Storyboard

In the (future of) news this week: Facebook, The New York Times, GigaOM, Hasselhoff? nie.mn/yrRbkW

Lovely video; shame about the business model

I post this video from Richard Koci Hernandez for two reasons:

— It’s a remarkable piece of work, which Richard says was assembled in 48 hours. Richard’s a lot more talented than most, but it’s a sign of what can be done with off-the-shelf tools (Adobe After Effects and Apple’s Final Cut Pro and Motion) these days.

— It’s a reminder of the limits of online advertising revenue for news content.

The video sums up a semester-long project at Berkeley where 59 journalism students built web sites to cover local neighborhoods. All told, they wrote 840 articles. The sites generated 20,650 unique visitors, 58,687 page views, and more than 600 comments from readers. Not horrible numbers for a startup.

It also had advertising, via Google’s AdSense. The sum total earned?

$41.77.

That’s a hair under a nickel an article, or about 71 cents a journalist. I hope they all enjoyed the pack of gum they bought with their weeks of labor.

There are, of course, better ways to make money from a web site than AdSense. But the quest for an online ad model that will actually pay journalists a living wage continues.

What to read next

Seth C. Lewis February 10, 2012

Still shaping the way people think about news innovation? A few reflections on the new KNC 2.0

The Knight News Challenge may be shifting gears, but it’s still an important window into where news innovation is taking us.

http://pegasusnews.com Mike Orren

Hey Josh:

I agree this is a cool video and that adsense doesn’t make you much money, but I think it’s a mistake to try to glean anything, pro or con about online ad models from this effort:

- Intentionally short term.
- Doubt any of the students were dedicated to ad sales.

Not saying it’s easy, but if all they did to monetize was throw up some adwords, this was a journalism experiment, not a media business experiment.
http://facultynh.syr.edu/masiclat Steve Masiclat

Perhaps there are deeper issues that explain the low revenues.

I wanted to have a look at the sites and their underlying structures, but I couldn’t find a URL to any of the six sites.

Tried a google search, got lots of links to the video. (so now I’ve been reminded over and over that nothing like this has been attempted). No URLs. Clearly this is about cool video.

AdSense with no strategy is certainly not a business plan. The obvious questions are: Was the data (which looks to be video-heavy) meta-tagged? Was there good quality structure? did they design the pages with adSense revenue in mind or did they concentrate on showcasing design skills? Did they create a site network to cross promote? You know, all that SEO stuff.

Too often, people conflate online video for web-delivered news, and the problems are worse when people claim to be doing community news. Look at the stuff Rob Curley said works for local communities–like “cover little league like its the Yankees.”

Real local content covered in good structured depth will result in better adSense performance.

As Mike Orren, the first commenter said, this isn’t easy. It does need to be treated seriously.
Pingback: Critical mass for journalists, and the aftermath « Ink-Drained Kvetch

Tags: AdSense, business model, Richard Koci Hernandez, video, video editing

← Previous article

Morning Links: December 3, 2008

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be custom CMSes

Exit zen mode