Gårsdagens intense Twitter-debatt mellom Henry Blodget (@hblodget) og økonomibloggeren Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) synliggjør hvordan klikkjakten ødelegger dagens nettaviser. I følge Blodget må amerikanske journalister ha 1,8 millioner sidevisninger i måneden for å gå “breakeven”.

Utgangspunktet for feiden mellom de to profilerte skribentene stammet fra at BusinessInsider-gründer Henry Blodget nylig sparket en av sine mest respekterte journalister, John Carney. Reuters-bloggeren Felix Salmon var raskt på banen og kritiserte Blodget for avgjørelsen.

Dagen etter fulgte Salmon opp med å kritisere Blodgets tabloide bildevalg:
@felixsalmon: .@hblodget’s business model: Take a story about M&A fees associated with AIG. Illustrate with 2 hot babes kissing.

De to twitter-meldingene ble fulgt av hissig debatt (se slideshowet til Business Insider – ikke akkurat brukervennlig, men 26 klikk gir det i hvert fall…).

Før Blodget følger opp med et nesten timelangt twitter-kurs i medieøkonomi – og sannsynligvis det nærmeste en redaktør har kommet til å erkjenne hva klikkjakten gjør med pressen:

ATTENTION JOURNALISTS!
Especially journalists who think they should not have to care about writing stuff people want to read.

Earlier today, I was attacked by a Reuters blogger (@felixsalmon), who was appalled that we care about writing stuff people want to read
What followed was an amusing (if frivolous) exchange on this topic, which is posted on Business Insider if you’d like to read it.
And that got me thinking…
Maybe the reason @felixsalmon and other MSMers who bemoan the crass commercialism of new media is that
they don’t know how the numbers work
So I thought, “maybe I’ll explain!”
And that’s what I’m going to do. So the vast majority of you folks are probably going to want to tune out for a while

As yet, few online pubs have figured out how to get readers to pay for news, which means most need to live off ads
Now, that’s a bummer and wake-up call, but it also is what it is. So until someone figures out another revenue stream, here are the nums…
Ad revenue for a general news site tend to range from $3-$6 per thousand pages. Ad revs for a business or premium site can run $10-$20
Now, let’s say you’re paid $60,000 a year. How many pages do you have to produce to carry your own freight?
$60k a year is $5k a month. At a $10 CPM (very high for general news), that’s 500,000 pages a month.
Of course, you’d probably like benefits, too, so throw in another $1k/mo, which is another 100,000 pages

Now, remember, there are a lot of other folks at your journo co, too–not just you. Without them, you can’t get paid for those views
There are sales folks, admin folks, tech folks, producers, editors, managers. And there’s rent. And hosting. And food. And insurance
At scale, your journo co needs to pay for all those folks and costs, too, and still have some left over for your investors.

So, really, you need to produce at least 3x the number of pages required to pay for your own salary and benefits, or your co will go bust
So, adding the 600,000 pages for your salary / bens plus all the rest of the co’s costs, a $60k journo needs to produce 1.8mm pages a month
And that’s at $10 per 1000 pages, which is actually a good monetization rate (business sites are higher, thankfully).
If you work for a gossip or general news site, the revenue per thousand pages can be far lower, requiring vastly more pages per journo

Now, here’s where the strength of your employer comes into play

It is VASTLY easier to generate millions of pages per month when you work for a site that has DIRECT READERS in the millions per month
Because then all you have to do is publish a reasonably interesting story and lots of readers will click on it

That’s why journos who work for sites/papers with huge readership are often more proud or lazy or holier-than-thou than they deserve to be

Because it’s the PUBLICATION readers are reading, not them.

Dette er såvidt jeg vet det nærmeste en redaktør har kommet i å erkjenne offentlig at medienes klikkjakt går på kvaliteten i mediene løs (selv om stadig flere trekker den slutningen).

Og dersom Blodgets tall er representative for Norge, med “krav” om 1,8 millioner sidevisninger per journalist i måneden, vil antallet norske medier skrumpe kraftig inn i løpet av kort tid. Forhåpentligvis vil flere finne andre inntektskilder. Men bunnskrapt kasse gir neppe gode vilkår for den sårt tiltrengte eksperimenteringen…

Oppdatering: Felix Salmon kommenterer Blodgets tall. Men usikkerhet knyttet til rabatter og hvor mye ledig annonseinventar siden har, gjør tallene vanskelig å vurdere.

Oppdatering 2: Salmon har også en post om hvordan han mener nettaviser/blogger bør satse på “lojal lesermasse”. Han tror også at Blodgets Business Insider kunne blitt finansbransjens Politico, en posisjon som i hans øyne er ledig. Blodget tror imidlertid ikke at modellen vil fungere.