[icernet] News sites could be the savior of journalism

[Arul Selvan]

Online news sites are becoming increasingly profitable, thanks to factors such as the growing availability of high-speed Net access and technology that allows ads to be imbedded in news stories, reports John Berthelsen of Asia Times Online. For example, The New York Times site reported a loss of $7.5 million in 2001, but profited $8 million 2002. This growth in the online market is adversely affecting other media. Research done by eMarketer shows that Americans who use the Internet at work cut their time spent viewing TV by 28.8%, their time reading magazines by 22.5% and newspapers by 23%. About 35% of these people prefer to get their news from the Internet than other media. Though the research applies to the American market, Berthelsen says it speaks greatly of the potential of the Asian market, which holds almost a third of the world's Internet users. eMarketer projects that by 2004, the number of Asia-Pacific online users will grow to 235.8 million. The prof
itability of online news sites seems to only apply to the Net versions of national newspapers. Smaller start-ups or e-zines that produce their own content (such as the Industry Standard, Red Herring and Salon) have suffered financially, despite the growing popularity of the Internet. Sites such as these have tried to rebound through subscriptions, but have found few takers -- Salon has 3 million readers, but only 20,000 have signed on to its subscription services, Berthelsen notes.

Source:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/ED12Dj01.html