the new news
One of the hottest topics of late is the evolution of the news. Make that the reinvention of news ... if someone can figure out the new economic model for it, that is.
What is known is that the business of delivering the news has to change. It's no longer economical to produce print in the age of digital. How can a printing company saddled with manufacturing and real-world product delivery compete with the economies of virtualization? And, it's not just the print guys. The wires, TV nets, etc. are all facing a similar crisis. Newsrooms around the world are struggling with the big question of how to pay for top notch reporters when the margins of delivering the news continue to dwindle in the face of citizen journalism, growing online share vs. tv broadcast news, and mind-numbingly fast news-cycles when the cost of a blog post is just about zero.
So, what's next for the news? What is the new news?
I've written before that I believe that the rise and rise and rise of User Generated Content will over time cause a flight to quality, as readers/consumers will look to Authoritative User Generated Content to help them filter out the newsworthy from the news.
That said, there is power in the masses. Hundreds of thousands of citizen journalists, appropriately engaged, can deliver some awesome news -- with a reach far greater than any wire service or modern day newsroom.
Where does all this lead to? I've got plenty more ideas here which I will share over time. It surely is an exciting time to be following the business of making news..
A number of players are hard at work trying to reinvent the space.
By now, everyone is familiar with Digg, the original UGC pioneer, which is notsomuch a newsmaking site as a site for people to post and rate 3rd party stories they find interesting. Reddit is a variant of the same story. A new player, Mixx, claims to be different/better, but for the life of me I don't know how/why. Use any of these 3 sites to learn what the broader online community finds compelling on a particular day from news, blogs, etc. Caution #1: It can be quite a crapshoot on all of these sites, as you are just as likely to be directed to news of the bizarre to hard news. Caution #2: All of these sites skew geek.
If you're looking for a new way to read the news, Newser claims to be a "faster, smarter" way to get your own personalized version of the news. Self described as: "An online news service that scans Internet news sources and, using human and machine-driven aggregation, delivers the best information in concise, efficient summaries, together with photos, video and audio and links to original stories." Bokay. So, you're a "smarter" aggregator. Interesting, but that still doesn't change the economic model.
3 companies who are trying to more radically change the economics of news are Newsvine, Current, and NowPublic.
Of the 3, Newsvine, which was just purchased by MSNBC, is closest to the Digg model for hard news. Readers suggest and rate which news stories are most relevant at a given moment in time. With Newsvine's user-gen ratings and algorithms, there's no need for an editorial board, as the site smartly lays out a constantly updated page of relevant news.
Current from Current TV, Al Gore's network, is sort of like Newsvine meets citizen journalism, combining user-created clips on anything and everything with user-posted and rated and commented articles and stories from 3rd parties. Much of this follows the CurrentTV model, which is all about user-generated television.
NowPublic is perhaps the most ambitious of the group. NowPublic has signed up more than >130,000 citizen journalists around the globe (140+ countries) to literally report the news as it happens, ala a new type of newswire. Instead of employing journalists, NowPublic relies on what they call "crowd powered media." NowPublic claims that they do not pay for news, rather they encourage citizen journalists to report news and allow them to own all rights to their stories. NowPublic recently began licensing stories on their "citizen journalists" behalf to the AP. Me-thinks the business model is currently a bit shaky, but that there's gold in them hills somewhere. Find the model which enables people to earn some decent money by reporting the news -- even in their spare time -- and reward and recognize people who are the best at delivering quality stories -- and we could reinvent a new way to produce the news.
more to come on this one...
What is known is that the business of delivering the news has to change. It's no longer economical to produce print in the age of digital. How can a printing company saddled with manufacturing and real-world product delivery compete with the economies of virtualization? And, it's not just the print guys. The wires, TV nets, etc. are all facing a similar crisis. Newsrooms around the world are struggling with the big question of how to pay for top notch reporters when the margins of delivering the news continue to dwindle in the face of citizen journalism, growing online share vs. tv broadcast news, and mind-numbingly fast news-cycles when the cost of a blog post is just about zero.
So, what's next for the news? What is the new news?
I've written before that I believe that the rise and rise and rise of User Generated Content will over time cause a flight to quality, as readers/consumers will look to Authoritative User Generated Content to help them filter out the newsworthy from the news.
That said, there is power in the masses. Hundreds of thousands of citizen journalists, appropriately engaged, can deliver some awesome news -- with a reach far greater than any wire service or modern day newsroom.
Where does all this lead to? I've got plenty more ideas here which I will share over time. It surely is an exciting time to be following the business of making news..
A number of players are hard at work trying to reinvent the space.
By now, everyone is familiar with Digg, the original UGC pioneer, which is notsomuch a newsmaking site as a site for people to post and rate 3rd party stories they find interesting. Reddit is a variant of the same story. A new player, Mixx, claims to be different/better, but for the life of me I don't know how/why. Use any of these 3 sites to learn what the broader online community finds compelling on a particular day from news, blogs, etc. Caution #1: It can be quite a crapshoot on all of these sites, as you are just as likely to be directed to news of the bizarre to hard news. Caution #2: All of these sites skew geek.
If you're looking for a new way to read the news, Newser claims to be a "faster, smarter" way to get your own personalized version of the news. Self described as: "An online news service that scans Internet news sources and, using human and machine-driven aggregation, delivers the best information in concise, efficient summaries, together with photos, video and audio and links to original stories." Bokay. So, you're a "smarter" aggregator. Interesting, but that still doesn't change the economic model.
3 companies who are trying to more radically change the economics of news are Newsvine, Current, and NowPublic.
Of the 3, Newsvine, which was just purchased by MSNBC, is closest to the Digg model for hard news. Readers suggest and rate which news stories are most relevant at a given moment in time. With Newsvine's user-gen ratings and algorithms, there's no need for an editorial board, as the site smartly lays out a constantly updated page of relevant news.
Current from Current TV, Al Gore's network, is sort of like Newsvine meets citizen journalism, combining user-created clips on anything and everything with user-posted and rated and commented articles and stories from 3rd parties. Much of this follows the CurrentTV model, which is all about user-generated television.
NowPublic is perhaps the most ambitious of the group. NowPublic has signed up more than >130,000 citizen journalists around the globe (140+ countries) to literally report the news as it happens, ala a new type of newswire. Instead of employing journalists, NowPublic relies on what they call "crowd powered media." NowPublic claims that they do not pay for news, rather they encourage citizen journalists to report news and allow them to own all rights to their stories. NowPublic recently began licensing stories on their "citizen journalists" behalf to the AP. Me-thinks the business model is currently a bit shaky, but that there's gold in them hills somewhere. Find the model which enables people to earn some decent money by reporting the news -- even in their spare time -- and reward and recognize people who are the best at delivering quality stories -- and we could reinvent a new way to produce the news.
more to come on this one...
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