Can Journalism Survive Independent Of Advertising Revenue?
| Monday July 14, 2014 16:02
A newspaper to survive using this new form of funding, is the taz.die tageszeitung newspaper in Berlin with its editor, Mathias Broeckers.
Broeckers, believes that his news organisation is testimony that journalism can survive independent of advertising revenue. The taz has run as a cooperative society, since 1992. Such a model, he says, is relatively good for press freedom and media independence.
Traditionally newspapers depend entirely on advertising revenue for their survival.
The model works in such way that cooperative members make donations to the society to run the newspaper while advertising revenue constitutes only 20 per cent. Profit is the least of their concerns because the idea is not to derive any financial benefits from the newspaper. The newspaper also has about 45 000 subscribers besides 5000 who subscribe online for the e-paper.
The initiative to run the newspaper as a cooperative society was borne out of members’ desire to have a paper they could truly call free and independent.
Thomas T. Nkhoma
Gaborone