Sad news for newmatilda.com
JA
May 27
This morning, it was announced that newmatilda.com, the popular news and comments website, will be closing its online curtains for good on Friday 25 June due to lack of funding.
Editor Marni Cordell explained the situation pretty bluntly in today’s editorial:
The short answer is: we’ve run out of money.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that newmatilda.com has never operated on a profit. However, we had projected that the site would break even by 2010. We’ve now come to realise we were being too optimistic and that we’re unable to continue publishing into the next financial year. This is in large part due to the sheer difficulty of selling online advertising in the current media environment.
This is sad and sobering news – over the years newmatilda.com has grown to be a popular site for many and a vital, independent part of Australia’s online media. The space has nurtured and published the work of many talented new writers, including Ben Pobjie, as well as Ben Eltham and Jennifer Mills (both of whom have also written for Meanjin). Eltham said of the news in Crikey:
… [I]t’s very disappointing because we were doing some really good stuff. I think the website was maturing and it was starting to establish itself as the mainstream media started to hollow out. The publication was starting to stand out as an actual site that was providing quality analysis and fresh angles and fulfilling an important niche in the mediascape.
On another level, this is also a stark reminder about just how tough it is to keep small, independent publications afloat these days. In her editorial, Cordell mentions that one of their strategies to help the newmatilda break even was to drop subscriptions in favour of increased advertising. Though the readership ‘more than doubled’ over the past three years, ‘the advertising simply hasn’t followed’.
Moreover, as the site has increased in popularity, so have our running costs — and with them the knowledge that we are unable to subsidise the project indefinitely. The big media players are struggling to find a workable online business model that allows them to pay their writers and maintain high standards — and so are we. Since we already run a very lean operation, cutting costs is not an option and we are taking the only path available to us at this time.
Much has been said about the survival of literary journals (as well as mainstream newspapers) in the current climate, with online models often held up as part of the solution. Meanjin is hoping to increase its online presence in the coming years, firstly because we want to offer readers the best of both print and digital, and because, as the Meanland project shows, we’re excited and curious about the future of reading. Yet we’re also aware that the online landscape, though thriving in terms of the interest it generates, has not developed any clear commercial models. The demise of newmatilda.com is a depressing reminder that a large numbers of hits does not automatically translate into a steep rise in sales, and that finding the right balance between staff, funding, quality, readership and advertising is no easy task.
Cordell ended by thanking newmatilda.com’s loyal readers and contributors, and made this final observation:
The online media environment we’re leaving is vastly different to the one in which we started. Since we launched, several mainstream opinion and analysis sites have joined us, including The Drum, Unleashed, The Punch and the National Times. Although we hope that the newspaper presses keep on clattering for decades to come, it’s clear that the role of online media outlets will only grow in the future — whatever business model they follow.
This has also been cross-posted at Meanland.
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