Online Journalism News

RBI considers pay-per-page view for online journalists

Posted: 05/05/08 By: Laura Oliver
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Screenshot of Reed Business Information website

Journalists working online at Reed Business Information (RBI) titles could be paid on a pay-per-view basis, according to a managing director of the publisher.

Speaking on a panel at the PPA's annual conference, Jim Muttram, who founded RBI's Estates Gazette Interactive, said rewarding journalists for the number of page impressions generated by their content online had been mooted by the company.

Journalists would take a lower basic salary in return for the chance to earn a commission style bonus for online content if such a pay model was implemented, Muttram told Journalism.co.uk.

"We have done some thinking about how we might reward journalists for page impressions. It's such a controversial view I think it would take some time before that comes around but it makes good sense," he told delegates.

Fellow speaker John Barnes, managing director of digital strategy and development at Incisive Media, said senior editorial staff within the publisher's titles received bonuses for reaching set online and digital targets.

Incisive has also experimented with performance based pay for blog contributions by journalists, he added, with the fee for each post raised if 'a certain threshold of unique visitors' is reached.

Got a story? Email our news team: Laura Oliver; Judith Townend or telephone +44 (0)1273 384290. You can also follow us on Twitter: @journalismnews / @LauraOliver / @JTownend.

Comments

I am an RBI employee and I cannot tell you how angry this nonsense makes me. From a practical point of view and a HR point of view it is completely unworkable. As the company is up for sale I would prefer the management to put their efforts into something that makes the company a better place to work, not a worse one.

Christopher Walton, Senior reporter, RBI - 09/05/08

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