Will their growing pains be too much for the newspapers to survive? In the past year several major newspaper publishers have either filed for bankruptcy (e.g.
L.A. Times) or closed down (e.g. the
Rocky Mountain News). Some people have blamed the economy for poor print readership, others have blamed the Internet.
Traditionally, newspapers relied on revenue from print ads, classifieds, and more recently, subscriptions. With the 24/7 availability of free news online, not to mention the plethora of citizen journalist blogs, the emergent real-time updates from the Twitter stream, and free classified sites like CraigsList and Kijiji, print subscription numbers are way down and advertisers are fleeing the dying medium.
In order to survive, newspapers must abandon their current business model and figure out how to make money online. Which of the ideas below do you think hold out the promise of helping newspapers get back in the black?
Place your green tokens on the ideas that you think have the best chance of success and red tokens on the ideas you think are doomed to failure. Each week you will get a new supply of tokens. The market will close mid July. Discuss your ideas in our forum.
In early August, a panel of Internet experts organized by the UCR Sloan Center for Internet Retailing will review your ratings and select the ideas with the greatest potential from the list, taking into account user behavior, industry trends, and their own expert judgment.
