5 ways social networks generate revenue for news sites

 The owner of a news site recently asked me about how to monetize the traffic he is generating through Twitter and Facebook.

While he likes the traffic, he is frustrated to see Facebook selling ads against his content and taking all the revenue.

Internet excesses recall Shakespeare’s time

Along with the decline of youth morals, a favorite topic of people of a certain age is the decay of the language.

The idea that there was a Golden Age of morals and language, now corrupted in our decadent time, has been a literary topic for a couple of thousand years. It is part of the human condition that elders wax nostalgic about the past and criticize their juniors.

In any case, the Internet is the latest seed of decadence. Some see abominations everywhere in spelling, grammar, usage, slang and taste. They are right, but they are misinterpreting what it means.

Nobody cares about your web page or your blog

Hiram Enriquez, director of digital media at MTV Networks, has a saying that is worth repeating to those who want to start their own media: "Nobody cares about your blog."

It’s a way of recognizing that there are millions of blogs and other media competing for attention on the web. In other words, if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. You have to prove the value of your content to attract an audience, and you have to market yourself through social networks and search-engine optimization, among other strategies.

Financial website integrates data on Central America

Versión en español.

It was out of frustration that Carlos Mora de la Orden started collecting and organizing information about the economy and stock market in his home country of Costa Rica.

Although an engineer by training, he is a financial adviser by profession. He wanted to provide his clients reliable, up-to-date information untainted by political or business interests.



Much of the information he wanted was hard to get. He decided to start collecting and publishing it himself. That was 14 years ago.

Newsroom integration at El Pais: change the systems to change the culture

Borja Echevarria with El Pais digital desk in the background. (Photo by James Breiner)

Versión en español aquí. 

El Pais is perhaps Spain’s most prestigious newspaper, but its parent company has been suffering financial problems, the print edition has lost readers and it trails its chief competitor in web traffic.

All of these factors have set the stage for the radical changes under way in the newsroom.

Leading digital journalist sees room for small media

Gumersindo Lafuente: Journalists need to look ahead, not back. "You can´t live off nostalgia." (Photo by James Breiner)

Versión en español aquí.

Gumersindo Lafuente, 53, is one of Spain‘s pioneers in digital journalism. He headed the web operations at El Mundo before going out on his own in 2006 and launching soitu.es, an innovative news operation that won audience and critical approval but closed in 2009 when its investor-partner pulled the plug.

Since then Lafuente has headed the web initiatives at El País, which is No. 1 in print readership and No. 2 in web traffic in Spain. In an interview in his office in Madrid, he drew on all these experiences in offering advice to digital entrepreneurs.

How to make money on digital journalism: a course in Spain

Last week I gave an all-day seminar to 30 journalists in Valencia, Spain, on the business aspects of starting a digital news outlet.

It‘s easy enough to launch a blog or web page, but the hard part is making money. I gave participants a series of examples of revenue sources other than advertising and subscriptions: