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According to cofounder Jeffrey Vander Clute, quoted in an announcement from the Reynolds Institute, “CircLabs has planned a suite of services, this first of which is code-named Circulate. Software development on Circulate is underway, and we anticipate launching the service during the second half of this year.”
The announcement, citing Vander Clute, says “CircLabs is engaged in conversations with a variety of potential strategic partners. The Associated Press has been among media companies providing feedback on the initiative since it emerged from the Reynolds Institute’s fellowship program.”
But so would we. How much we paid would depend on how much online journalism we wanted to buy and how attractive we made ourselves to advertisers. But if we paid nothing at all, the pickings would be slim. The key to the InfoValet, I see now, is that it’s designed to induce advertisers to spend serious money online. With that revenue stream coming in — or should I say restored? — publishers would be emboldened to define premium news in broad terms and demand money for it.
Vander Clute again: “We believe that newspapers should explore charging for online content when that content is both scarce in nature and of high utility to a segment of the audience. At the same time, we believe that revenue from advertising and other forms of commercial interactions will continue to be a critical means of financing news in the online ecosystem. Circulate will incorporate ways of generating high-value advertising revenue for participating news organizations.” (Vander Clute has been a consultant to the Reynolds Institute.)
