As a lot of people do, I often buy the newspaper. But isn't it amazing how they produce so many, and distribute them over this vast expanse which is Australia. Of course they don't do it by magic, the do it by money. Advertisers pay for much of this and so the big traditional mainstream media outlets, like the companies that provide my cherished newspaper, continue on their cycle of informing the masses.

These mainstream media outlets, however, are said to operate in a corporate interest, editor-deciding-what-news-really-is-news sort of way. Advertising often gets caught up in this atmosphere and is therefore seen as part of the 'commercial' nature. Commercial news, commercial interests, and commercial business. The word commercial in fact is defined as "...prepared, done, or acting with sole or chief emphasis on saleability, profit, or success", and advertising is after all there to generate revenue.

What happens then, when citizen journalism websites are created to repurpose, recontextualise, and reinterpret seemingly integrity lacking mainstream news? The purpose of these outlets are to be non-commercial so they may avoid the supposed corruption of the mainstream news. This surely includes the absence of paid advertising which is inherently commercial in nature.

Can advertising fit into the citizen journalism site model? Who would pay for it? If it was there would it undermine the ideology of citizen journalism sites?

If advertising could not fit in to the model, how would produsage sites meet their running costs, and how would individuals become self-supporting news produsers? Many of these sites, like Dutch website Skoeps, have been forced to shut down after failing to find a sustainable business model without advertising on their site. The owners of PCM Uitgevers and investment company Talpa Media on this said, "...The ambition of the news site was partially successful, but Skoeps did not succeed in developing a financially healthy perspective," even when receiveing 1 000 to 1 500 submissions per month.

But I am not saying that the type of financially healthy perspective which produsage and citizen journalism sites need to incorporate has to include paid advertising. In fact, one site is already successfully sustaining themselves from a the long term economic perspective. The site Helium encourages lots of people to write about the same topic, then gets its community to vote the best piece to the top. If no one likes the piece it doesn't even get published on the site. This way the community nurtures its good authors and ignores its bad. In addition to which, Helium has developed partnerships with various news outlets such that its authors can get paid for what they write and Helium takes a commission. Helium simply controls the phenomenon in open source journalism that 'the cream will rise to the top' through 'the power of eyeballs' (Bruns 2008).

If this model is so effective in giving produsage and citizen journalism sites long term economic viability, where does it leave advertising? It may be that advertising's place in mainstream news media may not correspond on this other platform. With alternative forms of news media gaining popularity with enormous momentum, advertising's place in the future should be questioned. Where it leaves companies seeking to promote their products and services and to what effect should also be questioned. That said, I like buying my newspaper each week, and so do many, many others. It's tangible news and I like that. But that only poses more questions and theoretical considerations... so i digress... and conclude this post.

till then! a*ms

(note: this post is under construction but all my main elements are here)

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