Media Post recently had an interesting analysis of the once-golden The Street’s fall. For publishers, there is one especially thought-provoking point:
Finance is TOO timely. Finance is one of the most valuable verticals in both an absolute and relative sense: total advertising across the banking and financial services sector is amongst the largest, and CPMs are high — allowing for publishers to create content profitably.
But the vast majority of finance and stock market information is too focused on immediate (and immediately disposal) news. Other verticals have a longer shelf life and thus, higher lifetime value. Content creation is expensive; you need to recoup the investment over a long payback period. With finance, it’s almost impossible.
Publishers try to carefully walk the tightrope between ephemeral and stale. For educational publishers this is an especially tricky balancing act, since educational material can’t be a moving target: Teachers like to know that the example they are referencing or the problem they are assigning hasn’t morphed. 
But many topics require frequent updating (do you want your references on Burma to ignore the current movements toward more inclusive democracy?). And the digital environment makes updating relatively easy. (Note that here I mean the technical aspects of updating. All of us in the content creation business know that creating, vetting and preparing content hasn’t gotten easier at all.)
But some information is largely disposable: valuable for a quick minute and then of little interest, except, perhaps, to a few scholars. The solution has generally been to charge a boatload for highly valuable ephemeral info — since it has to earn its contribution immediately. And as The Street discovered, a short shelf life undermines that financial viability of certain types of info.
The Street is still playing it out, but walk carefully on the tightrope.