Finkle plans to market long-form journalism by the piece, online

Derek Finkle, the director of the Canadian Writers Group is planning to launch a pay-as-you-go online digital publishing venture this spring to market single, long-form articles in much the way that this is now being done by Byliner and Guardian Shorts. 

According to a story by Jason McBride in the January 1, 2012 issue of Quill & Quire magazine, the as-yet-unnamed company is part of a growing trend towards new models for the publishing and monetizing of non-fiction writing, comparable to e-books. Byliner, for instance, markets original articles for from $0.99 to $5.99.

Finkle, who represents about 120 writers across the country ... is frustrated by both the shrinking magazine and newspaper markets and by how writers are being squeezed out of revenues generated by new digital platforms....

“No one is fostering and paying talent in this country,” he says. “And there are really very few places left to publish long-form stuff.” Unlike Byliner, Finkle also intends to focus on local stories, at lengths and depths that newspapers and magazines can’t realistically accommodate.

Finkle can imagine publishing, say, a controversial story about a Bay Street law firm that would potentially be downloaded by tens of thousands of lawyers taking the train home from work, with each reader actively contributing to the writer’s bottom line. “It’s subversive,” he says. “It’s an entrepreneurial opportunity that magazine writers haven’t had before. If you can make $40,000 on a story, that’s a game changer.”

Publications lining up with Journalism Online system

Pooh-poohed as it was at the start, Journalism Online, the system for helping newspaper, magazine and online publishers to make money from their content, seems to be catching on. More than 170 daily papers have signed on and more than 500 publications in total have agreed to join, representing more than 90 million unique monthly visitors.

The company was created by several partners, including co-founder Stephen Brill, and allows affiliates to set their own pay models, including sampling, micropayments, the ability to turn pay walls on and off and so on. It says one of its unique attractions is that readers can establish a single account to access multiple publications and platforms (whether they will -- or should -- do that is the crux of critics' complaints about such a system.)

Brill says: "By creating a platform of flexible hybrid models for paid content that maximizes online advertising revenue while creating a new revenue stream from readers, Journalism Online has helped shift the debate over charging for online new from 'if' to 'when and how.'"

Brill added that many publishers have moved past the "abstract debate" and are now working toward some kind of paid content model. The executives of Journalism Online figure that by focusing on 10% on avid readers, on average a Web site would keep 88% of page views and 91% of ad revenue if it put in place a paid-content strategy.

Gordon Crovitz, co-founder of Journalism Online, said that he noticed a change in thinking among content providers over the past several months. "Every publisher we have met with is now seeking to generate revenues for online access, which is a huge shift in strategy," he said in a statement.

Newspaper publishers band together to control use of, payment for content

Newspaper publishers in the U.S. are hoping that a consortium approach will allow them to control -- and be compensated for -- the use of their content. According to a story in Editor & Publisher magazine, more than 1,000 publishers, representing more than 50% of the top U.S. papers, has signed on to the Fair Syndication Consortium. AdBrite, an online advertising marketplace, has agreed to work with the consortium to help monetize content.

The Fair Syndication Consortium strategy is to track sites that swipe and re-use content from the original creators. The Consortium would then contact the site as well as the networks serving ads for compensation.