Meeting with Kai Falkenberg – Feb. 16, 2012
Kai Falkenberg, Editorial Counsel at Forbes gave Y’s Men of Westport-Weston an introduction to Entrepreneurial Journalism on Thursday. She is responsible for matters of libel, privacy, copyright, and newsgathering in the U.S. and internationally. Falkenberg said Forbes’ legacy print model was under growing attack by the middle of this decade. The expanding power of the Internet, then the 2008 economic collapse forced the industry to rethink their business models. Print publications rationed space to a well educated priesthood supported by a limited number of the often costly ads whose effectiveness is difficult to measure. Websites offer nearly boundless space to hordes of typically amateur journalists, most writing for visibility more than income, and relying on huge numbers of inexpensive ads that can be minutely tracked. The open question for journalism – print and electronic – remains whether either revenue stream will support its model in a smaller world demanding faster turnaround from a reshaped workforce now responsible for the complete product: news gathering, writing, editing, fact chacking, even adding a few photos, and often non-mediated posting.
Roy Fuchs
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