Slashdot Mirror
A Peek Into the Business Side of Online Publishing (Video)
Mark Westlake is the Chief Revenue Office for TechMediaNetwork. Slashdot has often taken a mediawatch role, especially when it comes to technology coverage -- which is what TechMediaNetork does for a living. As Chief Revenue Office, Mark is in charge of making sure enough money comes in to pay writers and editors, pay for bandwidth and servers, and hopefully have enough revenue over and above expenses to show a profit. We've interviewed editors and writers, and plenty of writers' work gets linked from Slashdot, but we pay little or no (mostly no) attention to the business side of the publishing business. Like it or not, if we are going to have online news someone has to sell the ads and make decisions about whether to set up a paywall or not. That's Mark's job. Like him or not, he does a job somebody has to do, and has been doing it for 30 years. He knows he's talking to a potentially hostile audience here, but he accepts that. As he says, near the end of the video, "...you can't please everybody, right?"
The biggest issue will be how do we know this news source is trustworthy.
The internet is like a bullshit incubator, bullshit gets spread far and wide and the further it is spread the more it is believed.
A news source that strives to be as objective as possible is extremely valuable to us the consumer, but is at odds with the industry as a whole and therefor how it gets funded is an issue.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.