How much profit does an online newspaper give back? Could you write and earn money by online journalism? What does a web editor do? these are the questions made by those who decided to pursue a job career based on their passion of writing online. I point out that there is a great difference between hobby and work: if you are not the secret son of a rich bilionaire, you will never live by passions. Find out the present situation and how you can earn money with journalism by working as a web editor.
First of all, look upon the context. Only-print journalism is already at the final stop. Media expert Philip Meyer, professor at the renowned school of journalism of North Carolina University, predicted that the last rumpled copy of the “New York Times” will be sold in 2043. According to his prediction, we are 30 years to the complete switch from print to online information. In Italy we are in the middle of a big drop of the print newspapers sales and therefore to a drastic decline of advertising investments.
What are the effects? Print newspapers have to fnd out a solution to balance revenues that are down and fixed expenses of printing and distribution. Greatest newsrooms are launching online editions and at the same time thousands of online magazines born, small companies that are doing a ruthless war.
But is it possible to live only by journalism? The director of one of the local newspapers for wich I cooperated wisely told me for the first day: “If you would like to earn a lot of money, don’t do this job”. I was right. That newspaper didn’t pay a lot, but at least it was accurate and at the end of every month it paid the amount due on time. Unfortunately it isn’t always like this and, expecially online, you can often hear stories of journalists that don’t get a cent for their work. These newspapers are easy to find out: you can periodically check the turnover of the names in the page with the list of journalists.
Now, many of you could be disappointed, angry and could ask: “I can write very well, I can find news, how can I turn my passion in a job?”. It is possible, but we have to forget traditional journalism or the syndrome of the world savior in shining armor that many have. Yhere are two solutions. The first one is to launch an online newspaper, assumption that I’m going to deepen in another article and requires careful planning without improv. The second one is to become web editor.
Content management could be the answer. Forget about op-eds from wich you can throw fired darts against everyone. You could do it with a blog, as a hobby. Instead, this job involves content creation for companies that ask for it and have accurate goals. To do ths job the typical foundations of hournalism are required, but I suggest to supplement them with great knowledge of Seo because in the online arena it is important to arise and be found. Therefore classic rules learned by several cooperations for different kind of newspapers should be fine-tuned to win the war of the prominence on Google.
This article, that could appear like the outburst ofa former journalist disappointed by this job, is actually an encouragement to use achieved skills and reuse them for more profitable activities than get people to earn some money. I have made this choice. I observed that a lot of online journalists don’t know Seo fundamentals and a lot of marketing guru prolific on many blogs can’t write journalistic article. Joining web skills and experiences in newsrooms, could emerge a new professional figure that can make quality contents optimized for search engines.I’m talking about the web editor that can be a very important asset for companies that want to reach exposure due to an effective online communication campaign.
