Forget about spring, it's now the dead of winter in the new media world.
At last weekend's fourth annual New Media Conference at the University of California at Berkeley, organizers handed out purple programs with a photograph of a barren forest on the front.
The theme: "After the Fall."
And that was pretty much the mood during this weekend of reflection and introspection for the online journalists. Many attendees remarked how different it was from last year's exuberance, when the conference's title was "Online Journalism: A Medium in Motion."
"Gravity has ceased, people are not sure where to go, or even which stars to go by," said Paul Grabowicz, director of the new media program at UC-Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. "Everything is up for grabs again."
But to judge by the panelists' sober pronouncements and the number of anxiously raised hands in the audience, there's more reaching than grabbing going on in the online media business these days.
Sure, there was some discussion of new channels for online content delivery --- from mobile phones and PDAs to e-books and interactive TV -- but in the academic climate of a university auditorium, those "next-generation" concepts seemed to vaporize rather than sink in. Even panelists were careful not to overhype the power of convergence, lest those technologies fail to deliver the revolution they promise.
For the most part, talk was of failed business models, lessons learned and challenges ahead.
Striking right to the heart of the matter, Grabowicz asked the question everybody in the audience was there to find out, but was too afraid to ask: "Is anyone willing to pay us for what we do as journalists online?"
Stewart Alsop, a general partner at New Enterprise Associates and the token VC of the conference, seemed to say, "Don't look at me."
"When investors are going to start investing in media companies is a short topic," Alsop said. "It's always been a short topic. VCs finance technology companies -- where there's enormous risk and the potential for enormous reward. Funding media companies was a one-time phenomenon, and it's over."
The general consensus was that online news is a commodity, the existing ad models have been a failure and consumers won't pay for content.
"There may be a business model out there no one's invented," said Vin Crosbie, president of the content consulting firm Digital Deliverance.
Crosbie, who also served as News Corporation's first director of online publishing, said that in the case of television, and radio before that, the medium existed before the business model.
"We may be in that case now with the Internet," Crosbie said.
In spite of the forgone conclusion that it's doomed to fail, one idea discussed at conference was the paid-subscription model, which has tentatively resurfaced at a handful of news sites in recent weeks, including Salon, TheStreet.com, Inside, and Variety.
"We're back to where we were on Day One, but with a vengeance," said Michael Cieply, West Coast editorial director for the meta-media trade magazine Inside.
Powerful Media, the publisher of Inside, was bought last week by Brill Media Holdings, the publisher of Brill's Content. The newly merged publication, Inside Content, will continue with Inside's paid-content model, despite the fact that the magazine has struggled to attract subscribers in the past.
"Stephen Brill's assumption is that, if it's something worth knowing, people will pay for it," Cieply said.
"What happened to the passion for news, the satisfaction of getting the story out and reporting the truth?" asked panelist Theta Pavis, a Wired News correspondent speaking for the "little guy" in the media business.
Pavis, who's the editor of Technophilly, an online magazine covering technology in the Philadelphia area, lamented the conference's gloomy obsession with the business side of new media and the palpable lack of enthusiasm and editorial spirit.
But the panelists were there to talk about how online media can work as a business, rather than what inspires them to keep at it.
"We're all on our best behavior talking about business models to stay on the good sides of people who pay us to do the news," Cieply said.
But nobody seemed excited about having to charge consumers for content, especially journalists themselves.
If it were up to him, Cieply said, "You rich guys pay for the story, everyone else takes it for free."
