New Business Models For News Summit

I don’t love conferences but I do love getting together with other people and talking about and working on issues. That’s what we do with our firm’s sessions events and that’s what I am going to spend today doing

The New Business Models For News Summit is happening in NYC today and I will participate in it all day long

The event was planned by a small group including our friend Jeff Jarvis. In his email to the people attending, Jeff wrote:

It is your role to get the discussion past the complaints, worries, blame, arguments, fights, and depression we’ve heard already and push the groups toward specific forward motion.

I like that role and am happy to play it

If you think about it, a lot of the investments I am personally involved in like outside.in, disqus, zemanta, twitter, and others are playing in this "future of news" sector and I have lots of ideas about how we can remake, reshape, and revitalize the news business.

I will microblog the event on my twitter page and please check it out during the day if this is a topic of interest to you. And there’s a hashtag for twitter, #newsbiz, that you can follow and a live stream here that kicks off at ~9am eastern.

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Comments (Archived):

  1. Josef

    Oh wow – sounds like something I should have come to. I’ll be following your Twitter page closely today. Thanks Fred.

  2. Rich

    I should have gone to this one, too.But, good to be able to watch it at my desk.That slide by Roussell was overly simplistic.

    1. fredwilson

      Of course it was but it was perfect for this audience

  3. Linda

    Great conference. Learned alot and enjoyed all the presenters. I was pretty surprised that there wasn’t a female speaker all morning. Reminded me of watching Sunday morning talk shows.

  4. Isaac

    A site I found (via Crikey.com.au, I think) and have been following recently is http://www.newsless.org/ – doesn’t quite have all the answers, but anyone working in this field might do well to run through it for ideas. Last couple of entries have been a little brief so read back a little further for the meat.Seems that currently a few of the main online properties in Australian media (News Ltd, especially) are taking the approach of pandering to the masses to get results in the short term but gain little respect. Putting up a hoard of Miranda Kerr bikini photos is great, don’t get me wrong, but what’s the point of difference when there is no fresh material/editorial and the same gear is available all over the net for free?

  5. shafqat

    I wish I was there in person, but it was still fascinating to follow via the live feed.The love the philosophy of “do what you do best, link to the rest.” Publishers are slowly starting to figure out that they have to keep the main thing, the main thing. Depending on who you ask, the main things is original, editorial content, or local news, or some variation of the theme. For everything else, outsource and keep costs low.In a way, running a news business isn’t very different from a startup in today’s world. You have focus on ruthlessly on product and refine features down to the core, while keeping costs low. Capital efficiency is your friend. I’m not sure when the fundamental change in the journalism industry is going to appear, but I have a feeling its just around the corner. We’re trying to position ourselves to be in the right place, in the right time 😉

  6. Sundelin

    Thanks for a great blog Fred! I have compiled the videos (3h) from New Business Models For News Summit, available at YouTube, for those of you interested: Videos

  7. fredwilson

    Yes