• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, March 1, 2010

Despite all the nay-saying about the prospects of free online content, magazine publishers who "give away" content for free online have a good chance of turning a profit, according to a new report and survey appearing in the Columbia Journalism Review.

On the other hand, the report notes that online publishing remains a chaotic, undisciplined arena for magazines, which have failed to establish uniform standards or practices for editorial matters.

The CJR survey gathered responses from 665 magazine editors, executives and managers from about 3,000 consumer magazines covering a range of circulations and frequencies, from weeklies to quarterlies.

Within this survey group, 68% said advertising is the primary source of revenue for their online publishing operations -- and the number rises to 83% among sites that are actually profitable.

Some 65% of the profitable group said they offer their content for free, suggesting that a business model based on free content monetized with online advertising can succeed. Overall, however, just 33% of those surveyed said their sites were profitable, while another third said they were unprofitable. (The remaining third didn't know -- a somewhat alarming finding in itself.)

Indeed, the findings were hardly all positive, and the bad news extended to editorial operations. According to Victor Navasky, a professor at Columbia University's journalism school and chairman of the CJR: "What the survey shows is that there are no agreed-upon ethical or professional standards and practices and that everybody is making it up as they go along." Navasky added: "We were dismayed, and in some cases depressed, by the survey's findings."

Among the less-than-ideal findings: 11% of respondents said there was no copy-editing for online content, and another 48% said copy-editing for online content isn't as rigorous as for the print edition. Furthermore, 40% said that Web editors tend to be less rigorous in fact-checking, with 17% admitting there was no fact-checking at all under Web editors.