Why I’m Bullish on the News

[Commentary] The news business will be 10 or even 100 times the size it is today. That doesn’t mean a $60 billion business grows into a $6 trillion business, but the audience, the number of news outlets -- and yes, the financial opportunities -- will grow massively. Here’s how it happens.

• The news business should be run like a business.
• The end of monopolistic control doesn’t mean that great news businesses can’t get built in highly competitive markets. They just get built differently than before. Now, with everyone on the Internet, three things are happening simultaneously:
• Distribution is going from locked down to completely open. Anyone can create and distribute. There is no monetary premium for control of distribution.
• Formerly separate industries are colliding on the Internet. It’s newspaper vs. magazine vs. broadcast TV vs. cable TV vs. wire service. Now they all compete. Both No. 1 and No. 2 drive prices down.
• The market size is dramatically expanding—many more people consume news now vs. 10 or 20 years ago. Many more still will consume news in the next 10 to 20 years. Volume is being driven up, and that is a big, big deal.

There are many ways to make money off journalism, but only if you abandon the race to the bottom.
News organizations are also going to have to mix and match revenue models. I see eight obvious ones: advertising, subscriptions, premium content, events, cross-media promotion, crowdfunding, micropayments and philanthropy. The total global expense budget of all investigative journalism is tiny, in the neighborhood of tens of millions of dollars annually. We can solve this one easily via crowdfunding, philanthropy and subsidization by otherwise healthy news businesses -- a combination that should easily cover the global tab of investigative journalism, and even increase the money available.

[Andreessen is co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz]