Hi: I'm Doreen Marchionni (Ph.D. '09, Missouri School of Journalism). I'll be your intergalactic pilot on this journey through my dissertation. Send whiskey, please.
What is journalism worth? That’s the question journalism managers and entrepreneurs have been trying to figure out ever since it became clear, years ago, that the Internet was disrupting local publishing monopolies.
And so we’ve endured years of conference panels, email exchanges, and blog posts about paywalls and paid content strategies, as publishers try to figure out exactly how much people are now willing to pay for news content.
Lost in this is the realization that people have been telling us - for generations - how much they’re willing to pay for news.
At least in Western democracies, citizens largely view news as “free” because it’s supposed to be a public service. Just the same, non-profit news organizations, including U.S. public broadcasting, survive pretty well on the donations of private citizens and deep-pocket donors. Seems people will and do pay for certain kinds of journalism.
(Source: tiffehr)
