Forward Looking Presentation on a New News Model
Jeff Jarvis gave a presentation at the Aspen Institute’s Forum on Communication and Society on the 17th on a new model to save local newsrooms. His concept is to transition from local newspapers to a network of hyperlocal blogs in the top 25 markets.
The Jarvis plan has some great ideas, but it also seems to have numbers I would tag unrealistic to live in the wild. The two biggest are the audience reach in the year 1 and the CPM rate for advertising. The estimated market share is projected to be 35% in Year 1 for large markets. I see too many established news gathering agencies to compete with to go that deep that early.
The model predicts that advertising rates will be at CPM $12 overall with $7.50 for local and $5.00 network. If pedigree of these sites can called a full thoroughbred hyperlocal the rate is going to be higher. Advertisers wanting local buyers are going to be spending more to stay ahead of their competitors. Why? A good hyperlocal is going to be running ‘Best of’ contest during the year and every business wanting to stay in business will be working to get the vote. The best way to get the votes is to advertise year round for visibility and name recognition.
There are two shared spreadsheets with the projections for the new news model that can be found here and here.
Jarvis’s new news model is just that, a model. The presentation did not announce a start-up coming in the immediate future. It may spawn one or a similar beast somewhere down the line. After sitting on it for I while I think I can see one good funding source to launch the project.
What do you think, do you think this dog could hunt?
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