AOL and Patch Media recently announced plans to launch Patch.org: a charitable website that will bring local news to communities. According to a recent press release, the new site will provide communities with "trusted local news" and any profits generated from advertising will be given back to the community.

Patch Media, a subsidiary of AOL, operates a network of 41 hyperlocal news blogs throughout the US. The new website will call upon community organizations to create a "page" for their own community. Journalists in the area will provide the community with local news and community members will be able to post events, updates and other content as they like.

The new site will fill the gap left after community newspapers disappeared in the wake of the financial crisis. According to the president of Patch Media, Warren Webster, the service's importance is in providing, "reliable objective news and information about critical [ local] issues...important to [ the] daily lives" of community members.

With much pessimism in journalism, from decreased advertising income and a lack of model for online publishing, the news media is in crisis.

But, does that mean news is over?

Not exactly, according to George Brock, former president of the World Editors Forum, current board member of WEF, and professor and head of Journalism at City University London, who recently gave an inaugural lecture on March 17 at City University on where journalism is right now and where it's heading.

His lecture not only explains what developments have led to the current state of media, but what to do to ensure news media survival "for they are in need of help."

Brock recognizes that much of the "debate about news is almost exclusive doom-laden" with dwindling advertising revenue, newspaper closures, and the lack of a business model that works. Although all of these point to the impending demise of news, Brock believes traditional journalism and the news can be saved. But, first it is necessary to ask what journalism is and whether it adds any value to society.

Changes in communications

When newspapers aren't grappling with the question of how to monetise online content, they are most likely battling against the hostile economic climate and advertising revenue downturn. Then, there is the age-old question of how to deal with competitors: Newspapers may be united in the preservation of print, but as the following story illustrates, each newspaper is its own separate entity:

The SF Weekly will be forced to pay rival publication San Francisco Bay $21 million in damages, after a court ruling found the former guilty of lowering the costs of its advertising space with the intent of putting its rival out of business, The San Francisco Chronicle has reported.

The Superior Court totalled that the SF Weekly, a publication belonging to the Village Voice Media Holdings, had been depriving the Guardian of as much as $200,000 a month, since March 2008.

The Village Voice Media Holdings executive associate editor, Andy Van De Voorde, made clear that the company will ask a state appeals court to overturn the ruling. He stated that the Weekly's low-cost ads were not a breach of antitrust laws and had in fact benefited local businesses.

While newspapers struggle to turn a profit from their websites, an encouraging finding from the Columbia Journalism Review has good news for media websites: 60% of larger magazine websites are profitable, MediaGuardian reports.

The survey and report Magazines and Their Web Sites, conducted by Victor Navasky, chairman of the CJR, and Evan Lerner, Editor of SeedMagazine.com, is the first effort of its kind to document and clarify what advantages and strategies 665 consumer magazines utilize on their websites.

The final report revealed that more than half of consumer magazines that receive over 1.5 million visitors per month are more profitable. Advertising, as expected, accounts for the largest revenue source for 83% of the magazines which answered the question.
These statistics hide an alarming fact: a third of the consumer magazines surveyed do not know if they make a profit and 110 measure profit separately. 209 out of 655 magazines did not answer the question. While it would seem like magazines are really turning a profit from their websites, one third of magazines are not sure if their websites are making money. Odds are larger magazine websites keep detailed data on profit, while smaller magazines are unaware of whether they are making money from their websites or not.