Future of online: making it sustainable

If there is one statement that can be (fairly) uniformly applied to the entire planet's online news media today, it is this: they are all either unprofitable or barely making it.

Even those few outlets, like The Huffington Post, that are not doing too badly have uncertain futures... Because online advertising, as it stands now, is blindingly cheap.

As we explained in our first chapter, talk to any online publishing executive anywhere in the world, and the first thing you'll hear is how it is impossible to live from online advertising and that is the reason editorial costs need to be cut in a never-ending race to the bottom. As a result, news sites themselves often become nasty and cheap, necessitating further cuts in ad rates.

And then there are paywalls.

Read the full article, as well as part one (How did we get here?) and part two (Needed - a fundamental re-think), on www.thedailymaverick.co.za.