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Venture capital runs out of patience

“Revenue flows almost solely to the platforms and ‘time-honored’ media brands.”

A year of wrenching consolidation in the industry is ahead as venture capital runs out of patience with media investment and revenue flows almost solely to the platforms and “time-honored” media brands.

Mergers and closures of some of the biggest names of the past 20 years of the first phase of Internet publishing will look like chaos but will leave a handful of survivors with scalable content management systems (anything with Jonah Peretti involved), a distinct advertising proposition and a commitment to journalism.

Bloomberg, Reuters and the AP will come back into their own as truly honest international news organizations but will face immense competition from the scale of soft-power journalism and content from Chinese state actors.

Peter Bale is president of the Global Editors’ Network.

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