> "Producing quality news content is expensive and people seem largely unwilling to pay for it."
Most news organizations produce news content for average people, for whom "the news" has little practical day-to-day value. Thus, their "users" are generally unwilling to pay for the content (and are therefore sold to advertisers as products). STRATFOR [0] takes the approach of producing very high quality news content that is of legitimate value to businesses, who are willing to pay decent money for that level of insight. (I don't know if they're doing well financially, just putting them out there because of their different approach.)
Patio11 is fond of pointing out that you should target the right customers, and avoid the pathological ones. This seems to me like a good example -- target the businesses that actually need to know about geopolitical shifts in Indonesia, rather than the average Joe who finds it interesting but not impactful.
Most news organizations produce news content for average people, for whom "the news" has little practical day-to-day value. Thus, their "users" are generally unwilling to pay for the content (and are therefore sold to advertisers as products). STRATFOR [0] takes the approach of producing very high quality news content that is of legitimate value to businesses, who are willing to pay decent money for that level of insight. (I don't know if they're doing well financially, just putting them out there because of their different approach.)
Patio11 is fond of pointing out that you should target the right customers, and avoid the pathological ones. This seems to me like a good example -- target the businesses that actually need to know about geopolitical shifts in Indonesia, rather than the average Joe who finds it interesting but not impactful.
[0] http://www.stratfor.com/ -- "Strategic Forecasting"