The project is researching best practices in the business of journalism online, gathering new ideas and experiments in revenue for news. We will build complete business models to share with the industry and with the journalists, communities, entrepreneurs, technologists, and investors who will create the future of news.

The project is funded by the Knight and McCormick Foundations. Two earlier conferences leading up to the work of the project were funded by the MacArthur Foundation. The work of the project’s first phase will be presented at the Aspen Institute in August and will be shared, publicly and in progress, on this site.

Our work begins with the assumption that there will be a market demand for quality journalism, watchdogging those in power, and that the market will find a way to meet that demand. The question so many are asking is how. We will attempt to answer that by projecting the future of news in a metropolitan area, concentrating on four perspectives — hyperlocal, the new news organization, publicly supported journalism, and the framework to support this new news economy as a whole.

We will use as our model market a hypothetical top 25 metro area in the U.S. where the sole daily newspaper has ceased publication. In short: We are asking what will fill the void. We posit that no single company or product will do that. Instead, an ecosystem made up of many players operating under many models and motives will emerge. In all cases, we are agnostic as to who owns and operates these entities: legacy or new companies, large or small. In that context, we will examine:

* The optimal hyperlocal (town or neighborhood) blog or site. We will look at how to maximize revenue to such sites, whether they are run by sole proprietors, larger startups, or established media companies. This will include helping sites provide the best and most valuable service to local advertisers; establishing local networks of fellow hyperlocal sites to increase sales and revenue opportunities; larger metro-wide networks; and exploring other revenue opportunities, such as paid models and commerce. We will look at what these sites need to succeed, such as networks, promotion by aggregators, and technology.

* The new news organization. Even after a market loses its daily paper, we believe there is an opportunity for a new news organization to be reconstituted around key journalistic roles serving the metro-area. We will project the scale of such an enterprise: its audience and revenue yielding its resources and functions: reporting, aggregation/curation, perhaps organizing the broader community and its news efforts. How many employees can a profitable, journalism-centered business support and what can and should they do? What is its relationship with other players in the ecosystem?

* Publicly supported journalism. We do not believe that any single savior– foundation, government, device, or massive public contribution — will rescue an existing news organization as it operates today from the crush of the market. But we do believe that publicly supported journalism — that is, from individuals, foundations, and perhaps companies — can play a role in this model city’s news ecosystem. This could take the form of a local Pro Publica or of crowdsourced funding through a platform such as Spot.US or of an expansion of public broadcasting’s role. The key question we will answer is what level of support will likely be available — projecting from current efforts locally — and what those resources could provide.

* The ecosystem’s framework. We will examine the supporting infrastructure this ecosystem will likely need, bringing together independent players to reach critical mass so they can recognize greater market value (in, for example, advertising networks and in mutual promotion) and greater efficiency (in, for example, technology platforms, the ability to create collaborative projects, training in journalism and sales, search-engine optimization…). Once again, we are agnostic to ownership: These functions could come from a single company (which is how we will present the model); they also could be provided by a legacy player or they could be offered by various players. To quote Mark Potts at one of our CUNY conferences, “You may want to be small, but to succeed at being small, you probably have to be part of something big.”

In addition, the project will gather and also propose a catalog of revenue models, working with those who are building systems to support paid content; interviewing local advertisers to learn more about their needs; talking with sites in the U.S. and elsewhere to learn what is working and not working for them; examining the possibilities for more unusual revenue streams such as e-commerce.

After this work is well underway and after the Aspen report in August, we plan to extend the project’s work to examine more business models, such as national and international content exchanges; interest-based sites and networks;

The project is headed at CUNY by Prof. Jeff Jarvis, head of the interactive program. Peter Hauck is project director, working with Jennifer McFadden, business analyst; business researchers Kate Albert, Gary Frangipane, Noah Xifr, Darshan Dedhia, Frank DiBartolo, and Senem Coskun of Baruch’s Lawrence N. Field Center for Entrepreneurship at the Zicklin School of Business; and reporters Matthew Sollars and Damian Ghigliotty, both graduates of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. We are grateful to the Field Center’s Edward Rogoff and Monica Dean for their support.

Last month, at a conference on non-profit media hosted by Duke University, Joel Kramer of MinnPost.com and Jon Sawyer of the Pulitzer Center, presented an outline for a nationwide “donor collaborative” (download the pdf of their whitepaper). The network would allow these new shoestring news organizations, many of which are filling coverage holes left as metro newspapers cut back, to expand their fundraising efforts.

The collaborative would grant money based on the not-for-profits success at raising revenues through other areas (donations, subscriptions, etc.). Grants would be a percentage of the organization’s previous year’s revenues, with a matching system for donations from individuals.

The network could also be a boon to foundations and philanthropists who want to help new news organizations. With successful for-profit newspapers the norm for the last century or so, philanthropists have been focused on helping the poor, curing disease or funding local arts projects. They are used to (and more comfortable) funding discrete programs–unlike news operations which require continuous funding. They have little experience with which to judge the viability of a news startup. As Kramer and Sawyer write:

It will require substantial effort on their part to make sense of the landscape and decide which enterprises to support. Because of the low barrier to entry, there will be many new startups in this space, and many of them may not have the skill or capacity to diversify their revenue streams, so they will be dependent on their foundation supporters for their survival.

Check out the conference website for all of the non-profit model papers.

I went to my first barcamp in October of 2006 and it changed the way I thought about in person collaboration. My friend Noel Hidalgo (who I met at that barcamp) and I eventually talked about an open space for journalism we called CopyCamp. The idea never took off for us, but for Jason it appears to have reached a groundswell. And the timing couldn’t be more right.

For those who aren’t familiar with Barcamps: Think open source conference. The agenda for the day is determined that morning by those who are participating (notice I didn’t say “attending”). This setup may sound chaotic – but using tested methods these “unconferneces” are usually incredibly positive and productive.

The discussion below does assume a bit of knowledge about Barcamps in general. If you aren’t already familiar – check out Barcamp.org co-founded by brillant web-thinker Chris Messina. Better yet – just attend one! This is not a club – anyone can attend, from a young cub-reporter to the CEO of a the NY Times. In a Barcamp setting – both these indvidiuals have something to contribute and gain.

p.s. It’ll be tough – but I may try and sneak up to Portland for the January 24th News Innovation Barcamp. That’s a six-hour drive from SF, but it would be great to meet like-minded folks up north.

Upendra Shardanand, founder of Daylife
Scott Karp, founder of Publish2
Dave Chase, CEO of NextNewsNet
Adam Bly, ScienceBlogs
David Cohn, founder of Spot.us