¿Pueden ser rentables las noticias?

La pregunta ronda muy fuerte entre los especialistas: ¿son las noticias un producto rentable? Huffington Post tiene sólo cuatro periodistas y tres mil blogueros que lo llenan de información gratuita (suma 4,2 millones de visitas únicas mensuales), un estudio del PEW muestra que el número de jóvenes (18-24) que no consume noticias ha aumentado de un 25% a un 34% en 10 años y otro estudio del Hitwise dice que el 22% de la demanda de noticias viene de los buscadores. Los tétricos pensamientos que entregan las cifras hacen pensar que es muy complejo intentar plantear un modelo de negocios rentable para la noticias. Es especial, porque muy poca gente estará dispuesta a pagar un "paquete de noticias tradicionales". Los modelos (como Politico) no son consistentes en el tiempo y las organizaciones periodísticas se ven lentas. En un escenario en que el avisaje sigue siendo el dominador y que su esperado crecimiento (online, por supuesto) sólo ha generado frustraciones. El siguiente artículo de The Economist, plantea que muchos medios deberán buscar un modelo de pago, generar nichos específicos o simplemente asumir que las noticias no siempre tienen que "ser rentables" para sobrevivir.

PERHAPS the surest sign that newspapers are doomed is that politicians, so often their targets, are beginning to feel sorry for them. On May 9th Barack Obama ended an otherwise comic speech with an earnest defence of an embattled business. House and Senate committees have held hearings in the past month. John Kerry, the junior senator from Massachusetts, called the newspaper “an endangered species”.

Indeed it is. According to the American Society of News Editors, employment in the country’s newsrooms has fallen by 15% in the past two years. Paul Zwillenberg of OC&C, a firm of consultants, reckons that almost 70 British local newspapers have shut since the beginning of 2008. The Independent and the London Evening Standard depend on the largesse of foreign investors. The strain is not confined to English-speaking countries: French newspapers have avoided the same fate only by securing an increase in their already hefty government subsidies.
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Broadcast television news is struggling too. Audiences have split and eroded: the share of Americans who watch the early evening news on the old “big three” broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) has fallen from about 30% in the early 1990s to about 16%. Local-news outfits are ailing as car dealers and shops trim their advertising. ITV, Britain’s biggest commercial broadcaster, is pleading to be excused from its obligation to produce local news.
All this has provoked much hand-wringing. Yet the plight of the news business does not presage the end of news. As large branches of the industry wither, new shoots are rising. The result is a business that is smaller and less profitable, but also more efficient and innovative.