News-Record.com

Suggestions for a business model for distributed content number in the hundreds, maybe thousands. Following are three that have flown into my radar this week. I know we don't like to talk revenue here, but sometimes we must. Besides, it's April 1. What other day can I depart from thinking about journalism to thinking about my future paycheck?

Anyway, would they work?

From Editors Weblog: If newspapers want to earn revenue from their online readers by keeping online content unbundled, they need to bundle their businesses. They need to agree to adhere to one registration developed in a way that the reader subscribes for free, leaves a credit card number on a secure site and is allowed to browse the Internet as she wishes without the worry of running into inhibiting paid walls while simultaneously contributing a small amount for each article she reads, photo slideshow she views or multimedia feature she watches. The total of those miniscule sums should be tacked on to the reader's Internet bill and be automatically distributed between service provider and content producer.

From Terry Heaton: Meanwhile, everybody misses the point of slick 2.0 applications elsewhere pulling ad dollars from businesses more interested in doing business than propping up what used to be the only ad game in town. This should be viewed as a significant challenge to media companies and local investors across the country, because there is significantly more at stake than meets the eye. As that ad money drifts outside the local community, it will impact more than just the media businesses located there. Big cities don't build stadiums to make professional sports team owners happy; they do so, because a local pro sports team means far more to the community than ticket sales. Same with local advertising dollars.

And Simon Waldman: What we need is a business model for decentralised content. What we need is a swift, easy and unpunitive licensing structure to allow content creators to distribute content; and for aggregators to aggregate -- with value to each fairly represented.

Unworkable? Well, actually, this model has been cracked before. It's how record labels deal with radio stations - through a centralised rights agency. If we start to think of our stories as songs, our feeds as albums, and the new wave of aggregators as radio stations, you can sort of see how it makes sense.