Despite the upheaval in the media domain that our sources document there will continue to be a demand for high quality news. While it is clear that blogs and other online media spaces can provide much of the content that traditional media does, and often do so better, there are still specific journalistic spheres that the leaner and meaner world of unbundled new media can’t provide for, at least if it relies only on ad revenue: perhaps foremost among them are foreign affairs and investigative reporting. Both these require serious resources, whether for maintaining a foreign correspondent abroad, or bankrolling an extended investigation. Our readings present a number of possible solutions to this problem, the most interesting of which being the ‘1000 true fans’ model and the potential for non-profit news. The beauty of the ‘1000 true fans’ model for journalism is that, with some adaptation, it allows traditional news outlets to maintain their breadth of influence by making their journalism available to the broadest possible audience, while at the same time securing a funding stream to assure the continuance of high quality journalism. It may not seem fair that some people pay for what others get for free, but fairness aside, if it can be proven sustainable it may provide a more stable shaft of light in the quest for alternative funding models. The New York Times’s experiment with introducing a paywall after a limited degree of free access could be considered the first mainstream implementation of this model.
The potential for non-profit news is exciting, not just in the voluntary space, but also as a model towards which even mainstream moguls might move. The elegiac quality common to many of the readings makes it clear that there is a potent fear for just what public goods may be lost in the breakdown of the traditional journalistic frameworks. We could argue that it is the continued responsibility to shareholders that makes the production of quality journalism on an increasingly shoestring budget ever more difficult, especially those areas mentioned above (foreign reporting and investigative journalism) which are poorly served by the new media offerings and expensive to maintain. Shareholder capital undoubtedly built institutions like the New York Times, but with uncertain returns going forward, the role of the philanthropist (see ProPublica) or even the state may be on the ascendant. Clearly, state involvement in journalism presents serious challenges for press freedom, but other stable democracies like the UK have shown that these can be overcome. If, as these writers suggest, there are areas of journalism that the new ‘unbundled’ environment cannot support, which are nonetheless vital to the maintenance of a healthy society we might consider state investment in this arena as little different to government spending on social security or other public goods.