What is the difference between entrepreneurial journalism and advertising? 

Full story from Adotas here

Forbes Gives Nod of Approval To “Entrepreneurial Journalism”

ADOTAS – Forbes is acquiring online news startup True/Slant. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. True/Slant is a relatively new company that provides a forum for approximately 300 former mainstream journalist to express news and opinion.

According to comScore the site had 90,000 unique visitors in June 2009. Traffic has now increased to 335,00 per month. True/Slant is different from most traditional publishers because they allow advertisers to have their own separate pages in addition to regular display ads. And, more importantly, its contributing writers can earn bonuses depending on the amount of traffic they draw.

The concept of the entire site is to allow the journalist to be entrepreneurial. And Forbes, being well know for their pro-capitalist stance, seems to be validating this integration of news and business.

It isn’t that news and business have ever been entirely separate but True/Slant has combined the roles traditionally assigned to separate divisions of a news organization into one entrepreneurial blogger. Conflict of interest between the editorial room and advertising is beginning to appear as a quaint old-fashioned ideal of an era gone-by.

Forbes, founded in 1917, will now use True/Slant.com for a 2010 makeover.

The basic idea of "individuated news" has been around for a while - readers define what interests them and then publications deliver the news based on relevancy through electronic mediums. Last week, the Washington Times and Media News Group began laying out plans on putting this into practice. It is a great idea that is worth keeping an eye on but there are some unaddressed issues.

In a not-so-surprisingly, glowing story in The Washington Times about the effort by The Washington Times and Media News Group, a representative from Media News said: "Once, the medium was the message. Now the message is the medium. Content is driving this, and in a way, it's a form of citizen journalism. They're close cousins. In this case, the news is citizen selected, but not citizen produced." Read the full story here.

It is a good point. And this effort will be fascinating to watch.

A few hurdles :

Will readers pay for it? Will advertisers pay more for it? Can the industry come together fast enough to offer its content on a large scale before Google adapts its alerts to do precisely the same thing with content that they rip off already from publications' free websites?

I think it is a great idea but these issues will ultimately decide its success or failure. I wish the Washington Times story had addressed them.