ARTS & FARCES internet

Mitch Ratcliffe says the answer is about US$180,000 per year per journalist.

That assumes, according to Ratcliffe, that good, solid, original reporting is “worth the same as a senior mid-level manager in a corporation, such as Microsoft or Google.” And Ratcliffe points out that amount could be split among members of a team, say US$10,000 each for a team of 13.

Here’s how Ratcliffe’s numbers break down:

US$130,000 annual salary and benefits
US$4,800 annual subscriptions and other information sources
US$2,500 monthly in travel
US$1,250 monthly in legal and insurance

Advertising is not going to pay for this kind of journalism. Get over it already. Innovative journalism will have to be supported by the users of news. How much would you pay for solid, current information on a topic that’s important to you—green energy, for example? What would it be worth to get enough information from a self-supporting reliable journalist to be considered generally well informed on an issue? Would you pay US$1 per month?

“What isn’t necessary for the news to flow effortlessly these days is a big company to distribute articles and programming,” writes Ratcliffe. Amen. He suggests a distributed non-profit or cooperative organization that would handle collecting subscription fees and distributing compensation. “This is critical,” writes Ratcliffe, “since it is most likely that supporters of reporting will want a collection of sources, not just one source. So, there might be a ‘Collective Press’ feed on US government, on the state of California, the auto industry, green energy, and so forth, the fees for which are split between many contributors.”

In this model the news stories would be open and freely accessible, using what economists call the nonrival, nonexcludable, pure public good model. Like public broadcasting or a lighthouse, it’s a pure public good in that everyone can use it and no one can force you to pay for using it. It’s nonrival because you can use it all you want without reducing the availability for the next user. It’s nonexcludable in that anyone that finds it can use it. Subscribers would receive additional benefits to reward support. Ratcliffe suggests “added convenience or increased interaction…. My thought is to give supporters enhanced commenting, Twitter access to the reporter, and other benefits, such as forwarding with private discussion links.”

With a US$12 annual subscription, Ratcliffe notes that the break-even point would be 15,000 readers. Certainly easily achievable for popular topics, but perhaps not so much for specialized areas of interest. For that we’ll probably have to pay more.

Like Ratcliffe, I’ll commit right now to support 40 such journalists that provide in-depth coverage of my areas of interest. The only thing wrong with this model is, once again, there’s no room for the serendipitous. But it’s a start.