Advertising has always subsidized the cost of investigative journalism -- also called accountability journalism -- so the price that people would be willing to pay for this costly and valuable service has never been established in the marketplace. Now that price is being negotiated by all the players in the digital world -- the publishers, the public, and government policy makers.

1. The economics of accountability journalism:
What price is right?
James Breiner, Universidad de Navarra, Spain
@jamesbreiner

2. 20 years as reporter, business editor,
head of investigative team

3. 11 years on the dark side,
publisher of a business weekly

7. Dominant duo
7
•56% of mobile advertising globally
•40% of digital advertising globally

8. “What you think you know about the Web is wrong.”
– Tony Haile CEO of Chartbeat
• Of 2 billion visits to hundreds of sites,
55% lasted less than 15 seconds

9. Few spend more than 2 minutes a day

10. Aargh!
10
• Piracy (aggregators)
• Bots, click fraud
• Ad blockers

11. ROI: Billions in taxes recovered, fines levied

13. ‘Radical sharing’
•Lone wolf journalists share their data, help each other
•Media organizations work together, across borders, across cultures

14. Graphic: Figures are euros per capita. From Nielsen & Linnebank (p. 16).

15. Distributed content
• Facebook Instant Articles
• Google Accelerated Mobile Pages
• Snapchat Discover
• Instagram
• Apple News
• Etc.
+ Faster load times for pages
+ Gives publishers some money
+ Extends the reach of publishers
- Dilutes importance of their website

16. Go for scale, eyeballs, CPMs like BuzzFeed
Or for engagement, relationships like Texas Trib

17. 17
•14,500 ‘partners’ pay $66 a year
• Value proposition is “editorial independence”
• $800,000 a year, 1/3 of budget
• Less than 1% of audience
• 54 employees
Relationships, not eyeballs
“Journalism in spite of it everything”

18. •Launched in Holland in 2013
•Initial crowdfunding $1.7 million
•40,000 subscribers pay $66/yr
•No ads, value prop. “editorial independence”
•14 full-time journalists, 22 correspondents

19. •Launched in 1999 by two journalists
•published in Tamil, Chinese, Malay, English
•9 million visitors a month
•16,000 subscribers pay $40 for English version

20. Expenses of senators, congress
•10 Harleys for senators
•Syndicated to major media

21. Should you charge for online news?
21

22. •Pay wall service merged with Tinypass
•1,200 news media on four continents
• $40 million in revenues for Piano in 2015

23. What am I paying for, exactly?

24. 24
•iTunes for news
•600,000 users in Germany Holland
•Pitch in U.S.: ‘no ads, no clickbait’
•$3.3 million from Axel Springer,
NYT

25. Who pays for accountability journalism and how much?
• Public subsidies- BBC, Nordic countries
• Non-profits, grants - local media, public radio
• Relationship model - Texas Trib, MinnPost, eldiario.es
• Subscription model - De Correspondent, Malaysiakini
• Paywalls - bundled digital and print (survival)
• Blendle - iTunes for news

27. Let’s continue the conversation in
Pamplona. Come visit
James Breiner, Universidad de Navarra, Spain
@jamesbreiner
jamesbreiner@gmail.com