This past week has seen some extremely interesting developments in the rapidly changing online content arena. First, on Thursday, The Washington Post announced it would begin curating articles from state political bloggers based on user voting and staff oversight. The bloggers will not be paid for their inclusion in the Post’s “Political Blog Network,” making the model very similar to new media news startups like the Huffington Post and The Business Insider.
Meanwhile, the Huffington Post reached its 5th birthday, and revealed that its traffic and revenue are on pace to more than double in 2010. The blog network’s management thinks the growth trajectory will continue at a similar rate for the next two to three years, putting the Huffington Post on pace to do more than $100 million in revenue by 2012 while serving more page views than the New York Times or CNN, according to an analysis by, who else, The Business Insider.
In the third interesting and related content announcement of the week, Yahoo! revealed a deal to purchase mass content producer Associated Content for $100 million. Other online media conglomerates like AOL have already entered this space with its purchase of Seed.com, and industry leader Demand Media is set for an IPO this summer. With the acquisition, Yahoo! seeks to produce a higher volume of content it can sell advertisement against.
That brings us back to The Washington Post, which is seeking to do much the same with its experimental blog network. The difference is, The Huffington Post and Associated Content are already producing content at scale, which is necessary to overcome the lower rate you can charge for placement on any given page. The Washington Post’s decision certainly seems to signal that management understands the need for a revamped content strategy to confront the reality of online media production and consumption, but the pilot effort will need to be scaled up rapidly if The Washington Post wants to remain relevant (and solvent) in the years to come.
As these moves demonstrate, the online media industry is better referred to as the online content industry. And the dawning reality shows that content is indeed king, but there is no grand nation for him to rule. Democratic content creation might not win Pulitzers or support expensive foreign bureaus, but may be the only viable way to pay the bills online.
