News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Elite Newspaper of the Future.

Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by mixmax on Sunday October 05, 2008 @05:19PM (#324355)
To me it seems pretty obvious that newspapers should not compete on gossip and up to the minute news, but rather on commenting, in-depth analysis and investigative reporting. The latter is not easy to find on a consistent basis on the Internet, and there is a clear market for it.

The economist, for example, does exactly this - and their circulation has grown 95% in the last ten years.

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Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by brandnewlow on Sunday October 05, 2008 @06:27PM (#324397)
What you and this post are talking about is transitioning toward being an intelligence service, not an all you can eat info buffet.

The Economist provides actionable intelligence on what's happening in the world. It truly is "news you can use."

Example: Back when I was applying to be a CIA agent (i pulled out after passing the first few steps) the interviewers routinely told me to read the Economist from cover to cover. The CIA considers it the definitive, authoritative consumer news product, full of information you can act on.

Same with the other example mentioned here, Consumer Reports.

That said, even if that's where newspapers go, they're still overstaffed. You don't need 1,000 reporters to break down what's happening in Chicago that week in a useful way.

The link economy that Jeff Jarvis blogs about so much (BuzzMachine.com - a must-read for people interested in the future of news) means you don't need as many people to re-report all the stuff your competitor reported.

Over at my humble Chicago news startup, I'm laying the groundwork for what I believe is the next sustainable metro news model.

Three pieces: 1. A crowd-powered, local link aggregator. Digg for Chicago, to be succinct. Open-source your tip line. Let your readers vote up, discuss and share neat, weird and important local links.

2. A blog network. Stick 2-3 local experts on every topic that newspapers typically assign beat reporters to. Have them aggregate, comment and contextualize 2-3 times a week. Create conversations around hot topics. We started a blog about Lollapalooza over the summer and posted to it just for 4-days. It was a big hit for us and was noticed by every news organization covering the festival.

3. Hard-hitting, impactful reporting/features that draw on what's hot from the link aggregator and the blogs. Once a week we publish something that you absolutely have to know to stay ahead of the conversation. To use blogger lingo, this should be linkbait of the highest caliber.

Anyway, I agree with the assessment in this article. You can either go low-brow (The Chicago Tribune now has a CollegeHumor-style blog that their interns run...it's awful) or you can go high.

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Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by mnemonicsloth on Sunday October 05, 2008 @09:19PM (#324511)
... an intelligence service ...

That was the exact phrase that popped into my head after reading the subhead.

Now for one of those nutty, wild-assed guesses: what do you think about Anathem?

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Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by brandnewlow on Sunday October 05, 2008 @09:26PM (#324515)
Sorry, haven't read it! Or any Stephensen, actually.

forfeits in geek card

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Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by unalone on Sunday October 05, 2008 @08:08PM (#324465)
Some of the stuff you mention sounds very similar to now NewsVine works. Letting people blog directly on the site, for instance, and delivering local news. That said, good luck on your start-up!
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Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by brandnewlow on Sunday October 05, 2008 @09:25PM (#324512)
Thanks. I'm very aware of Newsvine. Gotta respect what's come before!

My issue with Newsvine, and sites like Newser, Google news and all of the pure Digg-clones, etc is that they're run by hackers, not news people. And no matter what the founders say, they all have the same business model, to make money by commoditizing expensive stuff (journalism) that someone else paid for (newspapers).

The idea with my startup http://www.windycitizen.com (we did 50,000 uniques last week...and now apache crashes every 2 hours :( ) is to bring NEW stuff to the web. I want to fill holes in the internet. 3-4 times a week we publish exclusive original stuff. Last week we scooped the Chicago media so badly that the Tribune ran a copycat version of the story the next day. That was fun. I've never heard of Newsvine breaking a big story.

So yeah, Newsvine's great, but I want to get something going that will support original journalism of the type described in the original link.

Getting it going is rough, of course. I'm bootstrapping based on advice from a few entrepreneurs. I've got an application into the Knight News Challenge, which you can read here: http://garage.newschallenge.org/projects/1-crowd-powered-fro...

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Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by unalone on Monday October 06, 2008 @12:49AM (#324623)
Huh! Interesting idea. I'm not a Chicagoan, but it's a nifty idea and I wish you the best of luck.
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Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by robg on Sunday October 05, 2008 @05:52PM (#324376)
You know, when I read this I thought exactly of the Economist. And what's funny there - not only do I love their content and perspective, but I also look forward to receiving it in the mail. That and Consumer Reports seem to transcend the web, for me, based on the authority with which they seem to report.
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Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by mixmax on Sunday October 05, 2008 @07:42PM (#324447)
Same here - my edition of the economist takes up it's residence next to the toilet every week. It seems to be perfectly tailored for a weeks worth of toilet-reading.
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Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by SarahToton on Sunday October 05, 2008 @10:14PM (#324534)
Even online, there are many meta-journalist columns that attempt to offer added analysis and investigative reporting. One of the issues online is, of course, finding these sources, which are often more hidden than The Economist (a London magazine founded in 1843). Columbia Journalism Review (http://www.cjr.org/) is a rare institutional effort to do this.

While in-depth (or at least, accurate) analysis should be key to ALL journalism, many newspapers have strayed from, well, their local roots. Offering detailed analysis of local events (aka serving a niche market), as opposed to competing with major online blogs or The Economist, may breathe life into the printing press not to mention the newspaper website.

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Re:The Elite Newspaper of the Future by netcan on Sunday October 05, 2008 @08:36PM (#324484)
Sure that's good advice for the young, entrepreneurial would be editor. It means there are niche markets out there. Some of them are big. Some of them are lucrative.

It's not a realistic suggestions for the doomed giants. The economist sells to people wiling to pay full price for a good read. That's closer to JK Rowling's business model then most newspapers.

The papers make (made) money largely on services that are no longer necessary (from them) or no longer need to be bundled. Those that are left are now more competitive. Much more. Top that off with the fact that online ads don't pay as well & probably never will. Their business model has been pulled from under them.

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