People inreasingly aren’t masses that can be milked to shore up bad products or shoddy journalism. Passionate niches is closer to how I see things. I already pay for some blogs and some podcats – not journalists but journalistic activity – and I was saying to a big ad agancy the other day that I would actually seriously consider paying a premium for good, relevant advertising instead of tha mass market stuff I have shouted at me on a daily basis about products I have no interest in.

a) Masses + Adverts = Journalists get paid, life is peachy.
b) No masses + Adverts = No advertisers, no pay, doom, gloom.
c) Masses + Paid-for content = We all buy private islands. Woohoo.
d) No masses + Paid-for content = Journalists get paid, life is peachy.

Obviously option C is a fantasy land and B doesn’t bear thinking about. So with that in mind, it seems to me that people either need to charge for news content (D, as per my suggestion) or else they need the masses to be interested in it (A, but see comments about quality above). Or is there a better way?

And with that in mind, perhaps what’s needed online is two tier online news: if fewer people want good news content, and it’s more expensive to produce, then maybe the “give it away for free and pray for enough ad traffic” model isn’t suitable. Maybe what’s needed is a high-quality, vigorously reported and edited, paid-for news product. Like, you know, a magazine (ahem – due disclosure, blah blah). Hasn’t worked in the past, but if everything else is sliding downhill into chaos, then who knows.

@Chris – Beautifully, wonderfully put (first point, that is. The seventh one was a cheap gag, too )

@David – lovely Denmark. They have proper papers and proper cafes and art and stunningly beautiful women. Maybe I should move to Copenhagen?

@CPev – I love that idea of balance being created between providers, but surely the balance comes from the reader, who chooses which providers to pay attention to? Aren’t networks of attention just another way of outsourcing quality control to the reader?

@Tom & Euan – there is good content out there, hidden under the weight of dreadful content. Euan’s right, though, and his comment may bring us full circle to Chris’ original musing:

I wonder if the higher rungs will just be the lower rungs out-of-hours.

I’d defend our fumbling self-analysis on Hackbash above most of what we’ve managed to achieve for our clients. It’s wonderful to be able to write almost anything. Perhaps we don’t make the most of the privilege?