Viability in a Web World

By Henry Dubroff
May 7, 2009

In the Web 2.0 world, weekly business journals are still viable.

A focus on local news helps make business journals resistant to the commoditization of national business and economic news. Journals rely on huge amounts of revenue from advertising giants such as Craigslist and Google and offer highly specialized reports that customers are willing to pay for.

These factors help set business journals apart. And while daily newspapers feel under assault from new Internet-based forms of news gathering and distribution, weekly business journals have time to plot a strategy.

Below are some thoughts about digital promises and perils for weekly business journals.

Part 1: The Promises

*Breaking news bonanza. Thanks to e-mail blasts that drive traffic to the Web, a weekly business journal reporter is now free to break news that otherwise would have had to wait a week. Bankruptcies, big layoffs and earnings reports get real-time coverage.

*A branded product line. Business journals can now sell their Top 25 lists, event tickets, reprints and a host of products online. They can automate the awards nomination process and data gathering all while building brand presence for the publication. Some of the data can be sold to customers outside the market.

*Paid subscription potential. So far, business journals have posted Web content on a delayed basis and in limited form. But with paywall technology that limits some content for paid users, there’s a possibility of additional revenue from the journals’ electronic editions.

*Collaboration. With software and networking sites such as Publish2, groups of business journal reporters could collaborate on stories developing cross-market content. This can be tricky to control but it could put a business journal group into Pulitzer contention because of the enhanced ability to report not just in-depth but across multiple markets.

Part 2: The Perils

*Erosion of the core news report. With so much information flowing on the Web, it’s easy for business journals to throw in the towel on enterprise or in-depth reporting and just become a collection of boring feature stories. Keeping the printed newspaper fresh and deeply reported will continue to be a challenge.

*Death by a thousand blogs. With barriers to entry so low for the blogosphere it may be possible for readers to accumulate a lot of information about a local business area without subscribing. A really good tech blog, for example, could make it very competitive for a weekly business journal. My advice – if you haven’t already, start your own blog.

*Paralysis by analysis. There are so many new models for communication that business journals may become distracted while developing initiatives for Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and the other technologies du jour. Nobody knows  yet which of these will pan out over the long haul.

*Wasted time and money. By attempting to follow multiple disruptive innovations, business journals risk losing monetary and intellectual capital that couldhave been used instead to strengthen the core news report.

*Missing the mobile revolution. Ray Shaw, chairman of the American City Business Journals and a speaker at the recent Society of American Business Editors & Writers’ Annual Conference in Denver, said mobile might be the Web tool of choice for business executives and managers. This means getting quick-hit headlines into the hands of I-Pod users may be the ultimate Web 2.0 application.

When you look around the nation or the world, the weekly business journal seems to be working - in print and online.

The Economist is the world’s weekly report and Barron’s is doing just fine with killer stock tables and in-depth reporting on companies that used to be the province of BusinessWeek.Then there are the bread and butter reports of the weekly business journals. They are not easily replicated on the Web, but in different forms and particularly in mobile-friendly formats, they could become a significant factor in how news is delivered to business owners and executives.

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Copyright © 2009 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism