Comments on: California Watch’s revenue model: Charge news outlets, target donors http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/11/california-watchs-revenue-model-charge-news-outlets-target-donors/ Just another WordPress weblog Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:46:27 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: robert rosenthal http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/11/california-watchs-revenue-model-charge-news-outlets-target-donors/comment-page-1/#comment-54904 robert rosenthal Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:03:22 +0000 http://www.niemanlab.org/?p=11008#comment-54904 To clarify, the pressure that CIR and California Watch are under to create revenue models is largely of our own making. When we submitted our proposals to the California Watch funders, we presented sustainability as one of our goals and they all concurred that it will be important that we find multiple revenue streams so that we can alleviate our reliance on foundations. We are journalists and not business people, so we need to find partners, or hire people, who believe in our mission and also see opportunities that we might not see to bring in revenue. In our model, and I think this will be crucial for other new media models, the business side and the creative side (the journalists) have to have alignment when it comes to values and goals. We will be producing unique, high quality stories. We know we can do that. What we don't know is if we can help create a sustainability model that can be emulated. The goal is to turn revenue back into the work, and increase our ability to hire more journalists and support them. And, as I wrote earlier, reduce our reliance on foundations, who may or may not be there for the long haul. As we all know, this is a challenging task. We plan to take risks and try new things. We know we may fail with some of them. For our funders one element used to measure our success will be revenue we are able to generate. The major measure of our success will be our work and its impact on the people of California. But all that we do will be shared with other journalists so that they too can learn from and share our experiments, those that succeed and those that fail. To clarify, the pressure that CIR and California Watch are under to create revenue models is largely of our own making. When we submitted our proposals to the California Watch funders, we presented sustainability as one of our goals and they all concurred that it will be important that we find multiple revenue streams so that we can alleviate our reliance on foundations. We are journalists and not business people, so we need to find partners, or hire people, who believe in our mission and also see opportunities that we might not see to bring in revenue. In our model, and I think this will be crucial for other new media models, the business side and the creative side (the journalists) have to have alignment when it comes to values and goals. We will be producing unique, high quality stories.

We know we can do that. What we don’t know is if we can help create a sustainability model that can be emulated. The goal is to turn revenue back into the work, and increase our ability to hire more journalists and support them. And, as I wrote earlier, reduce our reliance on foundations, who may or may not be there for the long haul. As we all know, this is a challenging task. We plan to take risks and try new things. We know we may fail with some of them. For our funders one element used to measure our success will be revenue we are able to generate. The major measure of our success will be our work and its impact on the people of California. But all that we do will be shared with other journalists so that they too can learn from and share our experiments, those that succeed and those that fail.

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