New business models for news: the Great Wild Goose Chase

I liked Salon co-founder Scott Rosenburg's challenge to journalists. Don't start from the premise that a newsroom is there to be preserved, and then look for the business model to support it. It should be the other way round, he says, and he's dead right:

"Journalists who set out on the Great Business Model Hunt are trying to figure out how to support a newsroom. This is entirely understandable. If you have a great newsroom -- and as a lifelong reader I certainly feel that the Times does -- then of course you're going to worry about that around the clock once you realize that your old business model is doomed. But it's the wrong question. It's backwards. The newsrooms of today acquired their size and shape and structure thanks to the business model that supported institutions of their size. The world has changed; that model is vanishing. We shouldn't be asking "What sort of business can support a newsroom online?" The question is, "What's the best kind of newsroom that the online business can support?"

Read the whole post here.