links for 2009-04-20

  • Kevin: Steve Yelvington looks at the idea of the Boston Globe moving to a paid content model based on Amazon's Kindle. Rolling out a Kindle will require a lot of upfront capital, something hard to come by during the credit crunch. He suggests looking at the mobile phone industry for the kind of costs you'd need to amortise over six years. Moreover, he looks at the loss of revenue from classifieds, display advertising and banner advertising on a device like the Kindle. He also worries about Amazon as a middleman who will take a slice of an already lower margin business than newspapers.
  • Kevin: Jeff Jarvis looks the New Business Models for News Project at CUNY, which he is conducting with his students. This is worth watching, especially because they will be "doing this in the open, so we can get as much help as possible". They will begin looking at hyperlocal from a local perspective, 'a news ecosystem that comes after a metro paper," and paid content models. This is one to watch and possibly help with.