While everybody is chatting about the future of news, we’re shaping it. Currently, we’re working with the Italian magazine Internazionale, who is trying to figure out where to move with their website. As only an advanced process can result in advanced results, Internazionale agreed to open up the design process and let us talk about it on our website.

Internazionale contacted us a couple of months ago because they liked our design work. We agreed to start with a conceptual phase where we evaluate different strategical options. If they’re happy with our results, we’ll move on.

Business Models

This little entry is the second step in that first phase. The first step was the article on “The Value of Information” that we published yesterday. We wanted to see how much there is to our different theories about what newspapers need to do to survive the media shift. Currently, there are three main business models for commercial news sites:

1. Create internally curated information with high attention value and use your website as a platform to advertise for your print edition (like most newspapers)
2. Aggregate information and curate it with the help of your community (like HuffPo, Reddit)
3. Sell access to information with high monetary value (like the Wall Street Journal)

Internazionale is not a big publication, but it has a very dedicated readership. Over 30,000 readers of Internazionale meet every year in Ferrara to talk to the authors of their favorite magazine. As the name says, their readership is open top news from around the planet.

Method 1 can only be part of the solution. Internazionale’s articles have high attention value, but there is not enough material to feed their audience with a daily dose of proper high end content. Method 2 seems to make a lot of sense, since the readership is both willing to be active and well versed in different languages. Method 3 doesn’t make sense, since it’s hard to sell political or cultural information without a physical body that psychologically justifies the price.

Conceptual Questions

The conceptual questions we need to answer in the next couple of days are: What’s the business model? How does Internazionale.it define itself as a news product? How does it relate to the print edition? What interface does it necessitate? How does Internazionale communicate with it’s audience?

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If you have good ideas on how to shape the future of Internazionale send us a tweet.