And by masses, I mean an intelligent, intimate group of Cronkite School faculty and students.
Brown founded Court TV and msnbc.com before taking up the cross of launching News21, a program of the Carnegie-Knight Foundation, which we at ASU are a part of.
Now, he has taken on the daunting task of figuring out how journalists can make money online. He’s working with Gordon Crovitz & Steve Brill for the startup company “Journalism Online, LLC.” The business will provide a service for newspapers, magazines and other journalistic organizations that will teach them how to implement tools to make users pay for content.
It’s our goal to create an environment for data sharing, Brown says.
Tim McGuire, former editor and senior vice president of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, says Merrill is much more clear about what Journalism Onliine is. Prior to this discussion, McGuire felt the company’s mission statement was unclear.
Dan Gilmoor wants to know why the company isn’t more uptodate with what they’re doing, why the world doesn’t get what’s going on.
Brown says that the company is in its 7th week and still figuring things out as it goes. Unfortunately,there is a serious lack of data on this subject. He says they are starting a conversation that should have been started 10 years ago.
Legal issues are “complicated, archane and difficult.” The definition of fair use is an evolving one, and it is evolving now, according to Brown.
Mcguire wants to remember for that 340,000 ppl in the Phoenix-metro area still get a print version of the Republic and that cannot be ignored (business model?)
Brown is adamant that it would really bother him if what they created became a way for publishers to cop out of reinvention.
When asked if he thought endowments were a viable option for long-term sustainability, Brown responded, that they are “a way to underwrite new ideas and push them towards sustainability… long term, these endowed ideas still have to develop business models and strategies.”
