The Information: reinventing media
The shift from old business model which the legacy print media was built upon to the new digital model, was quite painful even for the huge print media outlets. Journalism content was highly subsidized by ads , newspapers began to neglect readers as customers. However, ads did not generate as much revenue for the digital media as they did in print, and free-content strategy of Internet generated very disappointing results. So, the question arose whether the “Content is actually a King”?
The paper written by Markus Somm- “Small is Beautiful” analyzes few cases which have gone by the New Business Model for Media path. One of the successful cases is The Information. The founder of The Information, Jessica Lessin advocates a business model which focuses on subscription and content uniquely. The outlet produces digital media about the Tech industry with its subscription fee of 399$ per year and people are willing to pay the fee because The Information provides unique Tech news and its business model is quite exclusive. They send several exclusive articles directly to subscriber’s emails, as well as invitations to special Tech events along with the news people cannot find anywhere but at The Information.
With this business model Lessin managed to occupy the niche in the Tech news market, targeted to specific audience(mostly from the Silicon Valley) who show a willingness to pay for a premium journalism if it is useful to them, their customers value reliable information. Jessica is convinced that she can make money by this truly journalist approach and it proves to be so. “Almost three years in, The Information is cash-flow positive, with 10 of the 11 most highly valued tech companies as subscribers. Lessin won’t disclose subscriber numbers beyond saying that they more than doubled over the past year, but observers estimate the site has around 10,000 members, including Valley megastars like Zuckerberg and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.” (Marr, 2016 )
“The Information has turned out to be incredibly worth the price tag, if you are into tech news. Really solid stuff I look forward to. ” — Danny Sullivan, Editor of Search Land.
Jessica placed her bet on paid content(subscription-based model), moreover she did not distribute the content on social media and found emails being more effective, making subscribers members of an exclusive club. Last but not least, her outlet did not produce tons of news articles every day, but only two articles per day about specific industry(Tech) and targeted specific audience. With this strategy she focused on quality rather than quantity of news. In my opinion, the business model Lessin has followed was risky but proved to be very successful.
Will this model work for other media outlets? I believe yes, any media outlet which is willing to cater an audience with a narrow interest areas instead of general news can learn a lot from the Lessin’s business model to succeed.
References:
Marr, M. (2016 ). Retrieved from Columbia Journalism Review : https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/information_lessin_silicon_valley_digital.php
