It has now been one year since GlobalPost launched online with the mission to bring back the nearly-lost art of international reporting for the American audience. Career newsman Phil Balboni launched the site along with Charlie Sennott, a longtime reporter for the Boston Globe. (Disclosure: I worked for Phil at NECN in the 1990s and 2000s.) The reports are well-done and diverse, but are also less about breaking news than examining it. So – is GlobalPost a business? MediaShift’s Mark Glaser writes about GlobalPost’s successes and challenges. Chief among the successes are the partnerships GlobalPost has established with such traditional media outlets as CBS News. Less successful venture is GlobalPost’s Passport service, a premium paid subscription that gives access to deeper content. The site originally charged $199/year, but has lowered it to $99 per year, and has still just garnered 400 subs.
In terms of the numbers, Balboni told Glaser the site surpassed its goals for the first year:
“I think we succeeded in our first year by bringing back great international coverage, with extraordinary reporting,” Balboni said. “We now have a legion of freelancers, and have had 4 million unique visitors in all of 2009. Our goal was to hit 600,000 monthly visitors to our site, and we exceeded that with 750,000 visitors last November, and 618,000 visitors in December.”
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We have noted this business model many times, as hyperlocal sites try to do much the same thing – arm a lot of inexpensive stringers with the capacity to report from anywhere. GlobalPost reporters are getting paid just $1,000 a month, but the site is generating an impressive volume of content. GlobalPost now faces a critical second year. Glaser was kind enough to interview me for this piece, and I posited that this will be the year GlobalPost sees whether it has a sustainable model. It launched with $8 million in funding, money that optimistically will take years to recoup. Still, I can tell you from personal experience that Balboni has said many times his goal is to see revenues moving in the right direction first.
Hyperlocal sites should keep a close eye on GlobalPost. It has a model that has drawn national attention. We’re now looking to see if it works.