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Going “digital first” has added layers of complexity for media companies, but publishers are certainly not done exploring the digital realm.
“It feels like we are still in this constant state of experimentation,” Phil Corso said, speaking to Editor & Publisher as an independent journalist rather than as a representative for New York Post, where he serves as news editor.
Corso recently wrote for MediaShift “The Best News Apps of 2017.” Some well-known brands were among his list: Reddit, BuzzFeed News, AP Mobile, Apple News and inkl. One of the commonalities among the apps Corso chose is that they’re free to readers, though not all had advertising components to them.
“The industry is only now starting to finally, fully embrace the concept of paywalls and other money-making ventures, so now the apps and aggregation services will now have their turn to figure out what to do,” he said.
“Right now, one of the biggest draws of news apps is that they are mostly free. So what happens then if you want to start using them for content that you’d otherwise need to pay for? Perhaps we will see news organizations teaming up with certain apps to create exclusive deals for sharing content…..the bottom line here is the market still needs to experiment a bit with this next phase of monetizing information.”
Corso has also noted a wellspring of creativity coming out of the mobile realm. “I have a feeling that partnerships will be key in the future of monetizing the news industry—partnerships of any kind,” he said.
For example, news organizations working with one another and “pooling resources” in the interest of investigative journalism, or publishers and advertisers partnering with sponsored content, events and more.
“It seems like anytime anything has worked in this space over recent years, it had something to do with partnerships and working together,” Corso said.
