mydigimedia by Amy L. Webb

Morningstar's bleak outlook for the media sector (via Cyberjournalist):

In our opinion, print ads, which make up the lion's share of newspapers' ad revenue, will continue to be at risk, particularly in the first half of 2007. We anticipate ad revenue from print ads will be down another few percentage points for the year. In particular, print national and classified ads should continue to face challenges, as ad spending in these categories is particularly susceptible to the threat of the Internet...We wouldn't be surprised to see yet another round of layoffs in the near future.

So again, someone tell me why we're not trying to develop a new business model for American journalism?

Here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to form a Wiki and invite economists, product developers, successful CEOs, publishers and anyone else who's interested to brainstorm a new model, one that isn't solely dependent on advertising. I'm serious about this, so if you're interested email me. (As a side note, I'm coordinating all of the business/publishing panel discussions at this year's Online News Association conference in Toronto - one of the sessions will be about this very subject.)