Contributor platforms – users create the content for you

I heard David Hepworth talk about this model a few years ago. Will work best for “prestige publishers” and strong communities. But content has to be strictly moderated…

“We had a 15, 20-page deck to raise some more money, and there was a diagram at the top [of a page] that said ‘the new newsroom,’” DVorkin said. “Wherever I went, people ripped that page out, folded it up, and put it in their jacket pocket.”

Which lead to a thought: What if the True/Slant model could be applied to a big brand? What if a media property could rely on un-or low-paid contributors* and embrace the Web? ”Maybe that’s our destiny here,” DVorkin said.

And it was. True/Slant was acquired by Forbes not long after DVorkin sought to raise another round of funding, and was then incorporated, at least in spirit, into Forbes. This contributor platform, which allows those previously mentioned “experts” to publish to the Forbes website, now allows 1,300 non-staff writers to post for Forbes.com, DVorkin said.

via How Lewis DVorkin’s True/Slant transformed Forbes into a publishing machine.