One of the highest profile operations among new international news models is GlobalPost, which opened up its online shop to some fanfare in January 2009. The operation is dedicated to providing news of the world via a team of correspondents who are paid a monthly stipend and stock in GlobalPost.
Its stories are viewable free of charge at its Web site, http://www.globalpost.com/, with earnings expected to come from syndication to other news outlets, advertising, and memberships that provide access to premium content. GlobalPost also offers the services of correspondents for hire for journalism projects. In some cases it is also partnering with other organizations, like the Christian Science Monitor, to cover the cost of a correspondent.
All of GlobalPost’s correspondents are living in the countries they cover, and as part of a January 2009 interview broadcast by the radio program “On the Media,” Bob Garfield reported that GlobalPost’s correspondents were reporting from 65 countries at that time (Garfield, January 2009). In addition to the correspondents GlobalPost has on stipend, it also solicits contributions from guest correspondents, providing one possible opportunity for emerging correspondents.
According to a mid-year message from GlobalPost President Philip Balboni posted to their Web site, GlobalPost had made 20 syndication agreements at that point, including deals with the New York Daily News, the Newark Star Ledger, the South China Morning Post, thehuffingtonpost.com and Reuters.com (Balboni, July 4, 2009). But a more recent development, the announcement in September of a partnership with CBS News, may be the best indication to date of industry respect and sustainability for GlobalPost’s model. “Having a broadcast network partner was a high priority for us, and to be associated with CBS News is a great validation of what we are trying to build,” Balboni told The New York Times (Carr, September 27, 2009). The deal brings monthly payments to GlobalPost in exchange for its journalists providing information that CBS will use as a basis for some of its reporting.
According to Balboni’s July message, GlobalPost had published 3,000 articles, videos and photo galleries since their January start. Balboni also reported that GlobalPost had received 2.6 million visits to its Web site from more than 1.1 million people in 223 countries and territories.
At the time of its launch, GlobalPost had 14 U.S.-based staff working on the editing and production of multimedia elements of its correspondent projects (Garber, January 14, 2009).
Founders Balboni and Charles Sennott are both experienced journalists. Balboni is also the founder and former president of New England Cable News. Sennott, who serves as executive editor and vice president of GlobalPost, is a former foreign correspondent and bureau chief for The Boston Globe who has also worked extensively in multimedia and as an on-air news analyst, according to his biography on the Global Post Web site.
Balboni told the Columbia Journalism Review for a January article on the launch of GlobalPost that international reporting must have for-profit models (Garber, January 14, 2009). “The best way to ensure long-term sustainability is by having a real business that is fired in the marketplace, and that has revenue that’s generated by consumers and other means that will sustain it for the long term,” he said.
Works Cited
Balboni, P. (2009, July 4). Message from president and co-founder Philip Balboni. GlobalPost. Retrieved from http://www.globalpost.com/about-us
Carr, D. (2009, September 27). To cover world, CBS joins with a news site. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/business/media/28cbs.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&ref=business&adxnnlx=1254143866-YBgnd9IbsMw0WRsyIANVRg
Garber, M. (2009, January 14). Johnny Jones 2.0. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved from http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/johnny_jones_20.php?page=all
Garfield, B. (2009, January). We are the world. Transcript of an interview broadcast on the radio program On the Media. Retrieved from http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/01/16/05
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