The Fourth Estate and the Internet

Northwest Arkansas Times Executive Editor Greg Harton attended Friday's meeting of the Political Animals Club at which I spoke and wrote this column in response. In it, Harton examines some of the very issues I've struggled with since creating this blog. The most profound commentary on blogs comes from this paragraph:

So many of the blogs that have gained audiences (and the thousands that haven't ) rely heavily on the newsgathering resources of so-called traditional media to provide material to which they respond. Without the newsgatherers, many of those sites would see their material dry up.

I've considered this very point many times and have wondered if the Internet will remain this way. Media outlets like the Northwest Arkansas Times have a bottom line to protect. They have employees who have mouths to feed, they have ink to buy by the barrel, and they have a host of other operating expenses that requires significant revenue by any standard in order to make ends meet. I don't -- this site serves as a service for my constituents and is just fun for me, and my costs are minimal. Yet outside the legislative session and Arkansas elections, the material from this site and blogs everywhere largely comes from that which is gathered by journalists being paid by other sources.

While professional media outlets do receive advertising revenue from their online sites, like Harton says, they can't rely on that revenue alone to exist. I mentioned during the program that, for selfish reasons, I disagreed with Walter Hussman's policy of putting lots of material "behind the wall," but in order for media organization to remain afloat, and for blogs like this to have material, he's right. The interesting part will be watching whether online material in the future is paid by advertising, user fees, web hosting services, or some other arrangement that has yet to be considered.