Changing the business model changes the business
Jay Rosen just twittered an interesting post from the Silicon Valley Watcher: 25 ideas: Creating An Open-Source Business Model For Newspapers.
What I like about this list of very smart ideas is that if implemented, they would create some fundamental changes in the way news organizations operate. If a group of reporters and editors actually adopted some of these suggestions, it would change the orientation of journalists as well as some of their day-to-day practices.
We’re not just talking about finding new ways to support journalism financially. We’re talking about new forms of journalism, period. New ways of defining what’s news and who is news; who is a journalist and what is an editor; how journalists interact with communities and vice versa.
A new business model isn’t independent from the newsroom; maybe the wall that has separated the two has had unintended consequences all these years, in addition to performing the functions for which it was erected.
What would we need to teach in a journalism school if some of these ideas turned out to lead the way to a new, sustainable model for news?
[cross-posted on Online Journalism Rocks]