The news media's imploding business model

Smartphones will soon be the primary news source for most Americans. That's if anyone can still make money by reporting. Pew research has a new survey showing that tablets and smart phones are now 27% of Americans' primary news source. The overwhelming share of this is phones, not tablets; and a reasonable view says this will rise to 50% in three years. Makes sense: just as radio became one of the big purveyors of news because it was the medium that traveled with you, so should mobile. If the news business on the web is depressing, contributing to the existential angst that has gripped every established news organization, mobile turns the story apocalyptic: there is no foreseeable basis on which the news establishment can support itself. There is no way even a stripped-down, aggregation-based, unpaid citizen-journalist staffed newsroom can support itself in a mobile world. Read more here