Is his Public Editor column in Sunday’s New York Times, Byron Calame addresses the proliferation of magazine-style sections in the Times that have been introduced to increase advertising revenue. Calame concludes that executive editor Bill Keller has the best interests of serious news coverage in mind. Keller says,
Well, the reason why we’re inventing these sections, I think, is obvious: They generate the revenues that help subsidize the stuff that drew most of us into the business.
My reaction to reading this piece was that I’m glad that the Times is doing its best to preserve the sections that I find most valuable. It also confirmed my position that I wouldn’t ever want to run a publication whose business model depended on advertising revenue.
But what will your publication depend on for financial support? Not subscription certainly, right? Unless you plan to charge a lot. Foundation money? Now that I write for a non-profit, I find foundation money can be even more limiting than advertising money. Foundations can have specific mandates while advertisers cannot.
What kind of model do you have in mind?
Comment by evicious — 10/24/2006 @ 11:40 pm