Will newspaper survive in the future?

In march 2009, a Democratic Senator, Benjamin Cardin, introduced a bill, Newspaper Revitalized Act, to help faltering newspaper industry in the digital media age. According to a report of Reuters, the Act "would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies."

Senator Cardin said, "We are losing our newspaper industry....the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy."

The primary goal of the bill was to help local community newspapers, not big major newspapers, by allowing them to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

Here are more specifics:

• Newspapers would report on all of issues, but political endorsements would not be allowed.
• Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt.
• Contributions to support news coverage would be tax deductible.

There is no doubt that newspapers are experiencing significant challenges in particular posed by the Internet and digital communication technologies. More and more people are going online for news and information, and advertising revenue has shrunk dramatically in the past decade. I agreed with the notion that the business model of newspaper industry based on circulation and advertising revenue is no longer effective and that it is time to explore a new sustainable economic model of news journalism through a different relationship with audiences.

Recently in July 2009, South Korea-based citizen media, OhmyNews, presented one interesting concept regarding the new business model of online journalism. OhmyNews was founded in 2000 and has known as the pioneer of citizen journalism.

OhmyNews founder and CEO Oh Yeon Ho announced a statement that asks readers to make financial contributions to make OhmyNEws a truly independent news company. The goal was to attract a 100,000 supporters' club with each member paying about $8 per month. The significant difference of this effort is to directly turn to audiences to figure out a new economic model of online journalism business. As of September 14, 2009, 4, 791 participated in the club.

I think that it is an interesting and important experiment, so let's keep watching how to pan out. To read it in more detail, please read an article in businessWeek.