The Faster Times: An experiment in how we value news

Posted by Leah McBride Mensching on May 13, 2010 at 1:03 PM

The Faster Times launched last summer with a new kind of business model, The New York Times reported.

Instead of paying staffers a set amount - creator Sam Apple, a writer from New York, would pay writers 75 percent of revenues from all the ads placed alongside their articles. Fees would likely start out small, but if the publication did well, writers would gradually make an increasing amount.

The set-up was "a small experiment in capitalistic incentives: contributors would profit directly from their work, according to the market's assessment of its value," The Times article, by Andrew Rice, stated. "And therein lies the catch -- for The Faster Times, for many similar start-ups and for the entire industry of media, old and new. No one seems to know how to value the product anymore. This isn't a lament about declining standards of quality or the rude incursions of amateur bloggers. In fact, thanks to the Internet, people probably read more good journalism than ever. That's precisely the problem: the sheer volume of words has overwhelmed a business model that was once based on scarcity and limited choice."

For more on this article, visit The New York Times.