Columbia Journalism Review wrote a piece on the new international news web site Global Post. I’m still deciding if I like the look and feel of the web site, but their journalism and business model infrastructure is fascinating. Here are some major highlights.

What is it?

…it was founded by veteran journalists Phil Balboni and Charlie Sennott; that it currently employs seventy freelance correspondents covering nearly fifty countries, seven of them dedicated to transnational, idea-based beats; that these correspondents are supported by fourteen U.S.-based staff members focused on editing and multimedia production; and that the outlet’s three-tiered financial structure relies on advertising, syndication (in print and online), and—this is the biggie—reader subscriptions.

Reader subscriptions you say? No. They must be joking. Haven’t we proven that audiences will NOT pay for content? Ah yes-but will they pay to be part of the editorial decision-making process?

The subscription service in question, Passport—whose $199 price tag, it’s worth noting, is an “introductory” rate for “charter members”—promises not merely access to “premium content” (podcast-y “conference calls” with correspondents, “newsmaker interviews,” a monthly digital newsletter and a weekly editor’s brief), but also access to the ears of GlobalPost’s editors. Passport members will have a say as to which stories correspondents are assigned: editors will choose their top story ideas, and paying readers will get to vote for their favorites. Those readers will be able, in other words, to take part in crowdsourcing that is editorial, rather than reportorial, in nature. GlobalPost’s is a model driven not only by the core premise that good journalism should be paid for, but also by the hope that the promise of investment on an editorial level will engender investment on a financial one as well.

The role of their journalists/correspondents:

Voice—though not bias—is encouraged, and not just in reporters’ blogs, but in their stories, as well. The point of hiring correspondents who live in the countries they’re covering is to avoid parachute journalism, to be sure, but it’s also to publish pieces of writing whose assertions are bolstered by their reporters’ daily experience. “Voice” suggests authenticity, but it requires authority to be truly effective. The logistical challenges faced by parachute correspondents—developing sources; learning which of those sources to trust; navigating, in every sense, new locales—won’t be as common for GlobalPost correspondents who, even when they’re not in their home cities, will be reporting from their home countries. Those correspondents, the thinking goes, will legitimize themselves and their stories—and the way they tell those stories—not just by being there, but by living there.

Newspaper and newspaper groups are likely to default on their debt and go out of business next year — leaving “several cities” with no daily newspaper at all, Fitch Ratings says in a report on media released Wednesday.

So says a new article from Editor and Publisher.

My first thought upon reading. “Holy crap.” I’ve known this was a possibility for a while. Hell, I even know this is reality. I’m a media geek. I read and write about this stuff all day long. And I’m not even a direct consumer of local print journalism. I read Chicagoist, The Beachwood Reporter and Huffington Post Chicago to keep tabs on local news (which makes me part of the problem and the news consumer of the now/future).

But when in read in black and white (pixels) it actually does hit you in the gut. I’m thinking about:
1) The Journalists–where will they all go? This is a human and actual practical question. I’m not the first or last genius to ask this question, but I’m putting it out there again.

2) The Journalism–the simple answer is that the journalism will just happen online. But most of the online local stories I consume still overwhelmingly refers, links and uses journalism originating from print media.

Sure some of the reporting will move online but there’s not a huge amount of local newspapers sustaining itself online only. The local blogs I read don’t employ or pay a huge number of journalists the way traditional print media outlets do. That’s how they survive.

And while they’ve already been disappearing, brainpower and effort into local investigative reporting could continue to slip. Many would point to the range of community-funded journalism (like the new spot.us) as the answer, and while the idea is awesome, the proof is not in the pudding quite yet. And no, Maureen Dowd’s column on the future of local journalism is outsourcing, is NOT the answer.

There’s still a lot wrestle with here. Although I do look forward to how journalists and publishers can take advantage of online tools (i.e. mashups) to tell stories in a different, but no less in-depth way. For example, look at what these students did with the News 21 Initiative!

3) Seriously–What will people read on the the train or the bus to work???? That’s the place where people have time to consume news! I guess it’s onto pushing for increased mobile media and wireless service in underground train tunnels.

FYI: Did you know about themediaisdying twitter feed? Way to be depressed and up-to-date on all the latest media gossip at the same time…

You decide…