Duncan Day-Myron of The Ontarian at the University of Guelph quoted Magda in his article on the changing news business.
Here is an excerpt that includes Magda’s quotations.
Magda Konieczna is a freelance writer and award-winning journalist currently working out of Poland, but who spent time working as the Guelph Mercury’s municipal affairs reporter. She is in the process of researching PhD work looking at alternative business cases for publishing news with the Waterloo Region Record’s Ryan Chen-Wing.
“We’re focusing on four models: not for profit, which is already prolific, with examples including the Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor and, closer to home, the Walrus; crowdfunding, of which I know only one good example, at spot.us; foundation-funded, such as ProPublica; and government-funded, like the CBC,” she said of her research, although her findings “haven’t yet come across any organizations that actually changed their business model from the standard, for-profit one to something else.”
[...]
The cost, or lack thereof, of news online isn’t the only issue. Konieczna identifies another factor that she feels has contributed to how the Internet changed the news industry.“I think what there’s been little recognition of until very recently is that the proliferation of news sources has changed the business model for news,” she said. “The problem isn’t strictly that of giving news away free; it’s that, given so many alternatives, the traditional funding for newspapers is fragmented so much so that it can’t support the number of newspapers it once did.”
– The Times… they are a-changing The Ontarian 5 Mar 2009
It is interesting that a student newspaper is looking at this issue. In general university newspapers are not-for-profits that are, in part, supported by a student fee levy. Models like that have been proposed for the wider newsmedia.
- Student media wades in 3 Mar 2009