A leading authority on the business model for journalism will speak at UGA on Oct. 18.

Rick Edmonds, a researcher and writer at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Fla., will lecture on “The Business Model for Journalism in Transition” at
1:30 p.m. in Room 150 of the Student Learning Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Edmonds will address key challenges to news media companies as the audience for journalism transitions from print to online.

His speech is the second in a four-part online journalism series presented by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and its James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Newspaper Management Studies.

Edmonds has been doing research and writing on journalism and business topics for the last six years for the Poynter Institute. He was also co-author of the newspaper chapter of the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s State of the News Media 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Some of his larger studies have related to newspaper staffing levels, news expenditures per subscriber, readership and circulation metrics, the characteristics of institutional investors in newspaper companies and the activities of foundations in commissioning journalism.

He has presented his work twice at annual meetings of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and to international groups in Paris, Norway and Chile. His most recent work has focused on new media challenges to the traditional newspaper business model, and he conducted a daylong seminar on the topic for editors of USA Today and USA Today Online in May 2005.