Delicious Today: $$ business models

#1: MSNBC.com to Monetize its Videos Throughout the Web

"Seeking to monetize this "off-the-site" consumption of video, the company will soon insert advertising into its embeddable player. ... in doing so, we have a motivation to, and an incentive to, distribute our content broadly and not be in an old model where everyone has to come to our website to view the video."

This is an example of "push" strategy that breaks away from the old "pull" or "build a portal" strategy. Instead of spending a lot of resources on pulling users to a media organization's own site (portal), the organization may achieve better return on investment by breaking total content into reasonable smaller pieces, branding them, and pushing them into places where their target audience already gathers. Public broadcasters can definitely use this strategy.

#2: How To Save Newspapers

"Newspapers could find a lifeline to solvency and a return to social purpose in a new kind of business structure called an L3C, or low-profit limited liability company." L3C is 'a structure that encourages foundation investment while allowing a profit. ... The successful creation of newspaper L3Cs is largely contingent on passage of the Federal law, which would effectively expand charitable purposes to include newspapers. ... The L3C is different from a typical nonprofit because it can earn a return, but the social purpose must trump the financial purpose."

This is my first encounter with L3C. I find it intriguing and think that it could well be one model for sustainable journalism.

#3: Journalism Online Signs First Non-Profit Org

"Journalism Online, the company founded to help publishers monetize content, is going after non-profit news producers. ... Journalism Online recently announced that more than 170 dailies have signed on as 'affiliate partners.' They partners were not revealed in the press release though the Los Angeles Times found that McClatchy, Tribune and Dow Jones did not sign with Journalism Online. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did, reported Nieman Journalism Lab."

One way to make a practice or technology industry standard is to have most and key players accept it. JO seems to be doing that by courting both commercial and non-profit media organizations to use its e-business engine. That engine may not the best solution for public broadcasters, therefore there is an urgency for public broadcasters to come up with their own answer about a sustainable business model.