7 ms·

YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism

71 points by suvike 17y ago

alaskamiller 17y ago
I've asked all my j-school (USC, Columbia, UNC, Berkeley) friends and they don't know. Most are just switching focus into media (ie, broadcasting) studies.
suvike 17y ago
I'm interested in the opinion of HN readers: PG says 'start from how to make money'; should j-startups be starting from advertising, or paywalls, or something else entirely?
- zackattack 17y ago
  Information, when properly applied, yields a competitive advantage. The next Bloomberg.
larryfreeman 17y ago
This sounds very similar to what my company already does: http://hubpages.com http://hubpages.com Google Knol has not done well in this space: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=757287 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=757287 America Online seems to be shooting for something similar: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/29/aol-newsroom-now-has-wow-1500-writers/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/29/aol-newsroom-now-has-wo... There's also squidoo and mahalo. Mahalo has recently done quite well in terms of growing traffic: http://www.quantcast.com/mahalo.com http://www.quantcast.com/mahalo.com It will be very interesting to see what startups emerge from this!
lacker 17y ago
This is particularly interesting as a RFS because Paul Graham's support will get you publicity from the beginning, and if there is a social aspect to your new news model, it will be able to get around the chicken-and-the-egg problem of being able to attract initial users. Best of luck to the takers, but I would guess that the future of journalism looks like TechCrunch: organized by topic rather than by location, not particularly unbiased, and much smaller in terms of both number of employees and size of profits.
- ntoshev 17y ago
  It's not Techcrunch that PG has in mind though - they have nothing to do with data mining. People paying directly for content suffers from another flaw - externalities. It makes no economic sense for any individual to sponsor public well being, so the Nash equilibrium is they don't do it. I guess you'd need data crunchers to either 1) figure out how to make ads work, or 2) do market research. Ads don't work in the context of general news, but they may work in verticals. Market research may not be big enough right now, but there is a general shift towards data-based decision making and if market research is cheap enough, more and more people would use it.
frig 17y ago
Sounds like subscription-only reddit wherein some algo flags trends and topics of interest for which the staff writer(s) then crank out quickly-researched / fact-checked summaries (possibly also scanning other aggregators / twitter / etc for discernible trends and dispatching a human to investigate + summarize, also). If that's what it is it seems like a poor investment; hopefully it's something better.
dmillar 17y ago
I wrote about this briefly a few weeks back. Got no karma love, but I don't think I was far from what YC is looking for. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=714977 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=714977
jasonlbaptiste 17y ago
check out http://www.pegasusnews.com/ http://www.pegasusnews.com/ Their founder really gets it and they're doing well. (Acquired already too, with the founding team still committed to success).
- dbul 17y ago
  Man, these neighborhood things are all over the place: http://southorange.patch.com/ http://southorange.patch.com/
  - fallentimes 17y ago
    This one has been very successful: http://www.baristanet.com/ http://www.baristanet.com/
    - brandnewlow 17y ago
      Also: http://westseattleblog.com http://westseattleblog.com (pulling in over $10,000/month off caveman simple display ads) http://uptownupdate.com http://uptownupdate.com (best neighborhood blog in Chicago, all writers are anonymous, they cover a rough, controversial neighborhood and overlook nothing) http://lakeeffectnews.com http://lakeeffectnews.com (laid off Chicago journo started her own site, bringing along the laid off ad sales person from her last gig) I could rattle dozens more of these.
jfornear 17y ago
Aside from crawlers, aggregators, CMSs, etc., I don't see how a small team of programmers without any kind of editorial insight can really do anything innovative for journalism. The real problem lies in the content, not the distribution channels or monetization models. Technical solutions that ignore what readers want won't succeed. Look at Drudge Report for case in point: Drudge Report is one of the most successful news websites out there, and it is completely powered by editorial vision. Also, The Washington Post, WSJ (online), and The Economist are doing well because readers value the content. They aren't doing anything drastically different in terms of business models or distribution methods. All the newspapers with poor content are going under for a good reason IMO. Let it happen, no one needs to save them. A handful of programmers from YC aren't going to shape the future of journalism, journalists will.
- alaskamiller 17y ago
  Here's the issue about this: Newspaper aren't meant to be editorial soapboxes. They, along with journalists, are meant to be just objective and factual. Having an editorial vision is a breach of journalistic integrity. So that said, a successful journalism venture of the future requires a balance of reporters, editors, and writers but anything too opinionated might make you (Fox News) or break you (when you reveal too much of your bias or it goes counter to what the popular opinion is). Personally I really like Talking Points Memo model of collecting and analyzing news. They've been building quite a lean and fast organization to capitalize on all the future of news.
  - evgen 17y ago
    While I admire the principle you are suggesting, the history and current reality of the new distribution business suggests that this "try to be objective" phase was a short-lived experiment that has no future. Newspapers have always been editorial soapboxes, that is how they get attention in a crowded field. Attention leads to readers/subscribers and readers are the product. Now that we have some pretty good neurophysiology data on how people process new information and with most of the current research suggesting that "opinionated" news sources are going to be the winners based on how our brains work I can't see any reason why the current trends are going to change.
rokhayakebe 17y ago
FOJ (Future of Journalism): FOJ analyzes how people consume media to determine what news to distribute to the masses. FOJ is essentially a browser plugin that not only analyzes what you are reading (meta data) but also how you are reading (eye-tracking, which is the secret sauce, and time-tracking ), and what you say about it (comments/tweets...). By combining the same information from a few hundred "content consumers" FOJ can determine a value for any particular news/topic. FOJ allows content producers to know what topics interests people at any given time and give them a solid foundation (content wise) to write quick posts. On the consumer side, FOJ works like the Stock market where the investors are the power content consumers and the money is the time invested reading and their comments.
rms 17y ago
http://www.windycitizen.com/ http://www.windycitizen.com/
GavinB 17y ago
This is phrased almost as a guessing game, so forensic analysis of RFS 1 is in order. The phrase "you can't have aggregators without content" and suggestion that a writer is needed implies that this is content creation, not aggregation. One way to start from making money is to let users pay to get what they want. Here's one place it could lead: Let readers bid (or paying subscribers vote) on what they want investigated or discussed. Journalists are actually quite cheap, so a few hundred interested parties could fund a weeklong investigation by a professional journalist. You could also solicit leads and research assistance from the readers. Then, once the story is published you still get any ad revenue, which could be targeted to the audience that you serve. Journalists could liveblog updates as they investigate, encouraging supporters to give additional funds to help them through the search. The editorial staff could float suggestions for stories and let users vote with their wallets on what they want investigated. In this way users could also directly support the journalists who do good work, and the organization would scale by the level of interest. Probably not what pg had in mind, but it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility.
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  http://spot.us http://spot.us is close but not quite that.
- leecho0 17y ago
  I like the idea, but I'm not sure people will necessarily know what they want to read about. Take, for example, a disaster, people would want to know about it as soon as possible. You don't want to wait until someone votes on the topic before writing about it. So I'd modify your idea a bit -- have many short snippets about rumors/events that quickly introduces a subject, to build interest, and will be free to everyone. Then have followup stories that will be voted upon.
- 10ren 17y ago
  Each story is a startup. You have investors, you have revenue sources. And this would especially appeal to pg. :-) But I'd suggest that you sell the content to existing news outlets. That is, you occupy the same role as Reuters, and plug into an existing network.
mlapeter 17y ago
This might be a bit random, but I was thinking it'd be interesting to see something similar to "object oriented news", where every part (sources, writers, editors, photographers) is broken down into "blocks" and rated according to the value they add: http://www.slideshare.net/secret/FPFC5tEoeQIKX5 http://www.slideshare.net/secret/FPFC5tEoeQIKX5 That way instead of just aggregating the news, news would actually be created and talented contributors would float to the top. They could also share in the profits, since their value add is actually rated.
ubernostrum 17y ago
"Journalism" isn't going to be saved by data mining or algorithms or nice design. It is not going to be saved by "hyperlocal" reporting. It is not going to be saved by per-user customizable topical filters. It is not going to be saved by search systems and RSS feeds for your neighborhood. It is not going to be saved by content federation. It is not going to be saved by mashups. It is not going to be saved by APIs. It is not going to be saved by putting everything behind a paywall. You want to make money off journalism? Useful content funded by advertising is the one and only answer. If you can't make money from that, you're either not producing useful content, or you're carrying too much unrelated overhead in your company. In either case, find the place where you're not doing as well as you need to, and improve it. Despite the popular opinion currently prevailing, the current situation in journalism is not some radical, never-before-seen catastrophe. It's good old common-sense economics at work: if you're not producing things people want, or if you're spending too much money to do it, you lose and someone else will take your place. Find some people advertisers care about. Find out what those people care about. Give them high-quality stories about it, and don't hire any more people or spend any more money than you absolutely have to. Do these things, and you will win.
- pudo 17y ago
  I don't really follow the "quality will save us" argument. It combines two very weak ideas into an even weaker one: the elitist news thing and the Britcannica argument. The elitist reasoning goes like this: MSM are only reporting MJ death stories etc. and this low-quality populism has cost them their readership. If they were to start doing serious reporting, all the clever people would come back and pay for their services. Of course, that's BS. The current reporting is directly created to reach the biggest audience, and it does. It works. The elites may go away ... but that's just a few eccentrics, who cares? The Britannica argument is that distributed groups on the internet can never produce anything that is nearly as good as the stuff that is produced by experts. This is certainly true for art, but for Britannica it simply didn't work out: Wikipedia did produce quality articles and content.
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    Quality is not a sufficient characteristic, only a necessary one. And saying that people who want to make money need to offer a quality product or service does not imply that only large and powerful companies can provide quality products and services. Also, I can't help noting the contradiction in your comment: you claim that "mainstream" news organizations are simply doing whatever will bring them the widest audience, with the implication that this is how one turns a profit. Yet it seems quite clear that those same organizations are not quite so financially sound.
danw 17y ago
Most interesting approach I've seen was Mobile Industry Review: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-mobile-indsutry-review-turns-private-research-firm/ http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-mobile-indsutry-review-... A free blog that turned into a private research firm for companies.
10ren 17y ago
One original purpose of newspapers seemed to to advocate political views, a factor which waned, then waxed as the industry consolidated. http://www.historicpages.com/nprhist.htm http://www.historicpages.com/nprhist.htm Another factor was timely reporting of battles. In the origins of the telegraph, the transmission of gold and stock prices was one driving factor. Of course, newspapers make money from advertisements, not directly from content. The business purpose of content is to attract eyeballs... the same business model of many web-based startups. For pure content creation in the news area, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters is the best model I've seen. Every news provider seems to buy their content.
csbartus 17y ago
The Personal News Agency Dealing with information follows the (almost universal) five-step pattern: sensing > filtering > reasoning > creating > enjoying. It is like noise > signal > information > action > flow, or, fear > accept > share > use > love. And many more. No one has to consider the existence of information sources. They will grow up instantly from individuals, local groups, global communities and professionals specialised on production. The most important is to find the right channels for you and open as many channels possible inside you to let information flow through your senses. Don’t bother about acquiring exact knowledge. Let your brain automagically store whatever seems to be important, go and discuss frequently your ideas to distill thoughts and opinions about what you have read. Create knowledge based on feedback. The tool you need must focus on helping you channeling, tagging, formatting information and producing, sharing results/knowledge. The return will come from surprisingly unseen and now unpredictable receivers. Once you shift from consuming to producing you’ll open channels in other systems willing to recognize your effort. More at http://clair.ro/blog/2009/08/17/future-of-journalism-the-personal-news-agency/ http://clair.ro/blog/2009/08/17/future-of-journalism-the-per...
tybris 17y ago
Micropayments for content providers, advertising revenue for aggregators, and the legal system to protect the copyrights.
danielfranz 17y ago
Somebody just wrote that there is good old common-sense economics at work. I’d say the subprime crisis is also good old common-sense economics at work. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a healthy thing and it's good for the industry, for the economy or for society as a whole. Quality journalism plays a critical role in our society. In every society - that includes the ones in "Western" states. The death of a newspaper in San Francisco or Boston is nothing less than a tragedy. Journalists do what they do - they write. They are obviously not exactly experts regarding the WWW and the "new" technology their distribution is based on now. They weren't capable of adjusting their business strategies and products to this disruption. Somebody needs to do that for them and the business model is not advertising alone anymore. In the past they generated revenue from ads and from content bundling. In the print channel interesting and high-quality articles subsidized less interesting ones or even whole departments. On the web there are no bundles, content is atomized and shareable. Clicks and links are the currency and people only click on links to articles (and ads) they’re interested in. Therefore in my opinion the only possible solution is to stop relying on ads alone and start charging readers for the product itself, which is the content - INCLUDING the delivery and presentation of it. Usually product development follows a business strategy of maximizing profit. Obviously that’s the profit of the company offering the product and not the profit of competitors and providers of supposed substitute products, like bloggers and evil news aggregators. But the technology makes the content shareable. It’s complicated and a somewhat "socialistic" approach to the problem would help. No worries, I don’t want to raise taxes or fees to finance the good, I certainly don’t think that’s the right way. All over the world press representatives ask the administrations to come up with ancillary copyright laws securing their interests. That’s ridiculous and shows that they didn’t even analyze the issue right. Bottom line: I’d try the re-introduction of bundling through simple flat-rate payment - with a solution based on the economics of the web, not the print world. Readers don’t face any switching costs. If one publisher asks for payment they just go to another. But if we offer content of all sources in one place, combined with revolutionary features they don’t get anywhere else, there is something to charge for. Start focusing on the delivery and presentation of the content. Start listening to users’ needs instead of advertisers. Journalists produce content. A third party platform is working as a personalized content hub based on simple XML-formatted or API-powered exchange of content and serving all kinds of reading devices. No, I am not talking about feed readers or Google News’ index but decent, well-planned apps and websites. The platform would have to offer really innovative features and top user experience and would be considered worth paying 2-3 USD/month. On a voluntary basis wealthy readers could even pay more and therefore get a higher "supporter status" they can communicate to the outside world (the same target segment already pays a lot for their LinkedIn accounts and other web-based services). It’s amazing what peer pressure can do. That paid amount is being split and percentages are paid to the according publishers based on the user’s reading behavior. The meshing-up is contrary to the content strategy of most publishers today but could become interesting to them as soon as they face revenue in exchange. As a result publishers could focus on their core competency (investigating and writing) and earn from partly "outsourced" delivery, like they often did in times of paper delivery. They could also focus on niche topics to build up competency and reputation in order to be "followed" in those areas by readers through these hubs - a truly capitalistic mechanism. Now the question is what are the killer features to make this happen? 1) The product would have to offer content from various sources. 2) It would have to improve the way readers can consume their daily or hourly news so drastically that they’re willing to pay a small amount. 3) Payment would have to be really simple. I do have thoughts on how to achieve this step by step with a freemium business model based on existing technologies and with existing shared content. I also have concrete thoughts on features as well as an almost finished product design. Personalization is the key. I am looking for developers and front-end developers with state-of-the-art CSS and AJAX knowledge, who think what I just wrote is not just stupid utopia and would like to work on this sisyphean challenge. Who would like to build a team and apply at Y Combinator? I am an ex web developer and UI designer and recent MBA graduate and Xoogler from Germany. Poll: approx. 34 % of users are willing to pay 2-5 USD/month Mashable - The New York Times Asks Readers If They’d Pay For Online Version (http://mashable.com/2009/07/09/new-york-times-online-subscription http://mashable.com/2009/07/09/new-york-times-online-subscri...) The New York Times - Let’s Invent an iTunes for News (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/business/media/12carr.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/business/media/12carr.html) Nieman Journalism Lab - How an NYT developer built a new way to read the news online (http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/02/how-an-nyt-developer-built-a-new-way-to-read-the-news-online http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/02/how-an-nyt-developer-built-...) Google Code's PubSubHubbub publish/subscribe protocol as an extension to XML content exchange (http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub) TechCrunch - The Media Bundle Is Dead, Long Live The News Aggregators (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/16/the-media-bundle-is-dead-long-live-the-news-aggregators http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/16/the-media-bundle-is-dea...)
SueGreenwood 17y ago
I love the arrogance: "We think [newspapers] will mostly die, because we think we know what will replace them..." You sure you want a team to work on the problem - or just to work on proving what you think you know? And why see the answer only in terms of "a content site"? The way we access news and information as individuals is already varied and becoming more so each month - and that's before we start to think about what might be arounf next year and the year after.
dsplittgerber 17y ago
Houndreds of startups are already on work at this one. Thousands of articles and proposals have been written about the problem. Yet no one seems able to describe in only a few lines a business model that does not involve just tossing out a few en-vogue words and other business bs like "revolutionary features" and "bundling" and "freemium". These are not a solution in themselves! Or am I the only one who sees it this way? If it were that easy, "the" solution (just one?) would probably already have been found. There are certain inherent advantages of reading on paper that just have not yet been adressed at all. Stop thinking about "bundling" or content - fitting content to a user's preferences is not the problem. Getting any time-pressed (and therefore potentially paying) user to at least consider consuming news/information digitally is the problem - it's just not efficient enough yet.
- catch23 17y ago
  the google founders were able to easily explain "PageRank" in just a few words, yet nobody considered their approach during the era of Altavista & Hotbot. There might be a simple & obvious solution out there, but nobody has attempted it yet.
  - dsplittgerber 17y ago
    Yes, exactly my point. It will be a simple & obvious (with hindsight!) solution. I'm just saying that if it were possible with the current ideas floating around (not just here), it would already have been done.
dang 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20090928050026/http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090928050026/http://ycombinato...

71 points by suvike 17y ago

I've asked all my j-school (USC, Columbia, UNC, Berkeley) friends and they don't know. Most are just switching focus into media (ie, broadcasting) studies.

suvike 17y ago

I'm interested in the opinion of HN readers: PG says 'start from how to make money'; should j-startups be starting from advertising, or paywalls, or something else entirely?

zackattack 17y ago
Information, when properly applied, yields a competitive advantage. The next Bloomberg.

larryfreeman 17y ago

This sounds very similar to what my company already does: http://hubpages.com http://hubpages.com Google Knol has not done well in this space: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=757287 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=757287 America Online seems to be shooting for something similar: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/29/aol-newsroom-now-has-wow-1500-writers/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/29/aol-newsroom-now-has-wo... There's also squidoo and mahalo. Mahalo has recently done quite well in terms of growing traffic: http://www.quantcast.com/mahalo.com http://www.quantcast.com/mahalo.com It will be very interesting to see what startups emerge from this!

lacker 17y ago

This is particularly interesting as a RFS because Paul Graham's support will get you publicity from the beginning, and if there is a social aspect to your new news model, it will be able to get around the chicken-and-the-egg problem of being able to attract initial users. Best of luck to the takers, but I would guess that the future of journalism looks like TechCrunch: organized by topic rather than by location, not particularly unbiased, and much smaller in terms of both number of employees and size of profits.

ntoshev 17y ago
It's not Techcrunch that PG has in mind though - they have nothing to do with data mining. People paying directly for content suffers from another flaw - externalities. It makes no economic sense for any individual to sponsor public well being, so the Nash equilibrium is they don't do it. I guess you'd need data crunchers to either 1) figure out how to make ads work, or 2) do market research. Ads don't work in the context of general news, but they may work in verticals. Market research may not be big enough right now, but there is a general shift towards data-based decision making and if market research is cheap enough, more and more people would use it.

frig 17y ago

Sounds like subscription-only reddit wherein some algo flags trends and topics of interest for which the staff writer(s) then crank out quickly-researched / fact-checked summaries (possibly also scanning other aggregators / twitter / etc for discernible trends and dispatching a human to investigate + summarize, also). If that's what it is it seems like a poor investment; hopefully it's something better.

dmillar 17y ago

I wrote about this briefly a few weeks back. Got no karma love, but I don't think I was far from what YC is looking for. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=714977 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=714977

jasonlbaptiste 17y ago

check out http://www.pegasusnews.com/ http://www.pegasusnews.com/ Their founder really gets it and they're doing well. (Acquired already too, with the founding team still committed to success).

dbul 17y ago
Man, these neighborhood things are all over the place: http://southorange.patch.com/ http://southorange.patch.com/
- fallentimes 17y ago
  This one has been very successful: http://www.baristanet.com/ http://www.baristanet.com/
  - brandnewlow 17y ago
    Also: http://westseattleblog.com http://westseattleblog.com (pulling in over $10,000/month off caveman simple display ads) http://uptownupdate.com http://uptownupdate.com (best neighborhood blog in Chicago, all writers are anonymous, they cover a rough, controversial neighborhood and overlook nothing) http://lakeeffectnews.com http://lakeeffectnews.com (laid off Chicago journo started her own site, bringing along the laid off ad sales person from her last gig) I could rattle dozens more of these.

jfornear 17y ago

Aside from crawlers, aggregators, CMSs, etc., I don't see how a small team of programmers without any kind of editorial insight can really do anything innovative for journalism. The real problem lies in the content, not the distribution channels or monetization models. Technical solutions that ignore what readers want won't succeed. Look at Drudge Report for case in point: Drudge Report is one of the most successful news websites out there, and it is completely powered by editorial vision. Also, The Washington Post, WSJ (online), and The Economist are doing well because readers value the content. They aren't doing anything drastically different in terms of business models or distribution methods. All the newspapers with poor content are going under for a good reason IMO. Let it happen, no one needs to save them. A handful of programmers from YC aren't going to shape the future of journalism, journalists will.

alaskamiller 17y ago
Here's the issue about this: Newspaper aren't meant to be editorial soapboxes. They, along with journalists, are meant to be just objective and factual. Having an editorial vision is a breach of journalistic integrity. So that said, a successful journalism venture of the future requires a balance of reporters, editors, and writers but anything too opinionated might make you (Fox News) or break you (when you reveal too much of your bias or it goes counter to what the popular opinion is). Personally I really like Talking Points Memo model of collecting and analyzing news. They've been building quite a lean and fast organization to capitalize on all the future of news.
- evgen 17y ago
  While I admire the principle you are suggesting, the history and current reality of the new distribution business suggests that this "try to be objective" phase was a short-lived experiment that has no future. Newspapers have always been editorial soapboxes, that is how they get attention in a crowded field. Attention leads to readers/subscribers and readers are the product. Now that we have some pretty good neurophysiology data on how people process new information and with most of the current research suggesting that "opinionated" news sources are going to be the winners based on how our brains work I can't see any reason why the current trends are going to change.

rokhayakebe 17y ago

FOJ (Future of Journalism): FOJ analyzes how people consume media to determine what news to distribute to the masses. FOJ is essentially a browser plugin that not only analyzes what you are reading (meta data) but also how you are reading (eye-tracking, which is the secret sauce, and time-tracking ), and what you say about it (comments/tweets...). By combining the same information from a few hundred "content consumers" FOJ can determine a value for any particular news/topic. FOJ allows content producers to know what topics interests people at any given time and give them a solid foundation (content wise) to write quick posts. On the consumer side, FOJ works like the Stock market where the investors are the power content consumers and the money is the time invested reading and their comments.

rms 17y ago

http://www.windycitizen.com/ http://www.windycitizen.com/

GavinB 17y ago

This is phrased almost as a guessing game, so forensic analysis of RFS 1 is in order. The phrase "you can't have aggregators without content" and suggestion that a writer is needed implies that this is content creation, not aggregation. One way to start from making money is to let users pay to get what they want. Here's one place it could lead: Let readers bid (or paying subscribers vote) on what they want investigated or discussed. Journalists are actually quite cheap, so a few hundred interested parties could fund a weeklong investigation by a professional journalist. You could also solicit leads and research assistance from the readers. Then, once the story is published you still get any ad revenue, which could be targeted to the audience that you serve. Journalists could liveblog updates as they investigate, encouraging supporters to give additional funds to help them through the search. The editorial staff could float suggestions for stories and let users vote with their wallets on what they want investigated. In this way users could also directly support the journalists who do good work, and the organization would scale by the level of interest. Probably not what pg had in mind, but it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility.

brandnewlow 17y ago
http://spot.us http://spot.us is close but not quite that.
leecho0 17y ago
I like the idea, but I'm not sure people will necessarily know what they want to read about. Take, for example, a disaster, people would want to know about it as soon as possible. You don't want to wait until someone votes on the topic before writing about it. So I'd modify your idea a bit -- have many short snippets about rumors/events that quickly introduces a subject, to build interest, and will be free to everyone. Then have followup stories that will be voted upon.
10ren 17y ago
Each story is a startup. You have investors, you have revenue sources. And this would especially appeal to pg. :-) But I'd suggest that you sell the content to existing news outlets. That is, you occupy the same role as Reuters, and plug into an existing network.

mlapeter 17y ago

This might be a bit random, but I was thinking it'd be interesting to see something similar to "object oriented news", where every part (sources, writers, editors, photographers) is broken down into "blocks" and rated according to the value they add: http://www.slideshare.net/secret/FPFC5tEoeQIKX5 http://www.slideshare.net/secret/FPFC5tEoeQIKX5 That way instead of just aggregating the news, news would actually be created and talented contributors would float to the top. They could also share in the profits, since their value add is actually rated.

ubernostrum 17y ago

"Journalism" isn't going to be saved by data mining or algorithms or nice design. It is not going to be saved by "hyperlocal" reporting. It is not going to be saved by per-user customizable topical filters. It is not going to be saved by search systems and RSS feeds for your neighborhood. It is not going to be saved by content federation. It is not going to be saved by mashups. It is not going to be saved by APIs. It is not going to be saved by putting everything behind a paywall. You want to make money off journalism? Useful content funded by advertising is the one and only answer. If you can't make money from that, you're either not producing useful content, or you're carrying too much unrelated overhead in your company. In either case, find the place where you're not doing as well as you need to, and improve it. Despite the popular opinion currently prevailing, the current situation in journalism is not some radical, never-before-seen catastrophe. It's good old common-sense economics at work: if you're not producing things people want, or if you're spending too much money to do it, you lose and someone else will take your place. Find some people advertisers care about. Find out what those people care about. Give them high-quality stories about it, and don't hire any more people or spend any more money than you absolutely have to. Do these things, and you will win.

pudo 17y ago
I don't really follow the "quality will save us" argument. It combines two very weak ideas into an even weaker one: the elitist news thing and the Britcannica argument. The elitist reasoning goes like this: MSM are only reporting MJ death stories etc. and this low-quality populism has cost them their readership. If they were to start doing serious reporting, all the clever people would come back and pay for their services. Of course, that's BS. The current reporting is directly created to reach the biggest audience, and it does. It works. The elites may go away ... but that's just a few eccentrics, who cares? The Britannica argument is that distributed groups on the internet can never produce anything that is nearly as good as the stuff that is produced by experts. This is certainly true for art, but for Britannica it simply didn't work out: Wikipedia did produce quality articles and content.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  Quality is not a sufficient characteristic, only a necessary one. And saying that people who want to make money need to offer a quality product or service does not imply that only large and powerful companies can provide quality products and services. Also, I can't help noting the contradiction in your comment: you claim that "mainstream" news organizations are simply doing whatever will bring them the widest audience, with the implication that this is how one turns a profit. Yet it seems quite clear that those same organizations are not quite so financially sound.

danw 17y ago

Most interesting approach I've seen was Mobile Industry Review: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-mobile-indsutry-review-turns-private-research-firm/ http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-mobile-indsutry-review-... A free blog that turned into a private research firm for companies.

10ren 17y ago

One original purpose of newspapers seemed to to advocate political views, a factor which waned, then waxed as the industry consolidated. http://www.historicpages.com/nprhist.htm http://www.historicpages.com/nprhist.htm Another factor was timely reporting of battles. In the origins of the telegraph, the transmission of gold and stock prices was one driving factor. Of course, newspapers make money from advertisements, not directly from content. The business purpose of content is to attract eyeballs... the same business model of many web-based startups. For pure content creation in the news area, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters is the best model I've seen. Every news provider seems to buy their content.

csbartus 17y ago

The Personal News Agency Dealing with information follows the (almost universal) five-step pattern: sensing > filtering > reasoning > creating > enjoying. It is like noise > signal > information > action > flow, or, fear > accept > share > use > love. And many more. No one has to consider the existence of information sources. They will grow up instantly from individuals, local groups, global communities and professionals specialised on production. The most important is to find the right channels for you and open as many channels possible inside you to let information flow through your senses. Don’t bother about acquiring exact knowledge. Let your brain automagically store whatever seems to be important, go and discuss frequently your ideas to distill thoughts and opinions about what you have read. Create knowledge based on feedback. The tool you need must focus on helping you channeling, tagging, formatting information and producing, sharing results/knowledge. The return will come from surprisingly unseen and now unpredictable receivers. Once you shift from consuming to producing you’ll open channels in other systems willing to recognize your effort. More at http://clair.ro/blog/2009/08/17/future-of-journalism-the-personal-news-agency/ http://clair.ro/blog/2009/08/17/future-of-journalism-the-per...

tybris 17y ago

Micropayments for content providers, advertising revenue for aggregators, and the legal system to protect the copyrights.

danielfranz 17y ago

Somebody just wrote that there is good old common-sense economics at work. I’d say the subprime crisis is also good old common-sense economics at work. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a healthy thing and it's good for the industry, for the economy or for society as a whole. Quality journalism plays a critical role in our society. In every society - that includes the ones in "Western" states. The death of a newspaper in San Francisco or Boston is nothing less than a tragedy. Journalists do what they do - they write. They are obviously not exactly experts regarding the WWW and the "new" technology their distribution is based on now. They weren't capable of adjusting their business strategies and products to this disruption. Somebody needs to do that for them and the business model is not advertising alone anymore. In the past they generated revenue from ads and from content bundling. In the print channel interesting and high-quality articles subsidized less interesting ones or even whole departments. On the web there are no bundles, content is atomized and shareable. Clicks and links are the currency and people only click on links to articles (and ads) they’re interested in. Therefore in my opinion the only possible solution is to stop relying on ads alone and start charging readers for the product itself, which is the content - INCLUDING the delivery and presentation of it. Usually product development follows a business strategy of maximizing profit. Obviously that’s the profit of the company offering the product and not the profit of competitors and providers of supposed substitute products, like bloggers and evil news aggregators. But the technology makes the content shareable. It’s complicated and a somewhat "socialistic" approach to the problem would help. No worries, I don’t want to raise taxes or fees to finance the good, I certainly don’t think that’s the right way. All over the world press representatives ask the administrations to come up with ancillary copyright laws securing their interests. That’s ridiculous and shows that they didn’t even analyze the issue right. Bottom line: I’d try the re-introduction of bundling through simple flat-rate payment - with a solution based on the economics of the web, not the print world. Readers don’t face any switching costs. If one publisher asks for payment they just go to another. But if we offer content of all sources in one place, combined with revolutionary features they don’t get anywhere else, there is something to charge for. Start focusing on the delivery and presentation of the content. Start listening to users’ needs instead of advertisers. Journalists produce content. A third party platform is working as a personalized content hub based on simple XML-formatted or API-powered exchange of content and serving all kinds of reading devices. No, I am not talking about feed readers or Google News’ index but decent, well-planned apps and websites. The platform would have to offer really innovative features and top user experience and would be considered worth paying 2-3 USD/month. On a voluntary basis wealthy readers could even pay more and therefore get a higher "supporter status" they can communicate to the outside world (the same target segment already pays a lot for their LinkedIn accounts and other web-based services). It’s amazing what peer pressure can do. That paid amount is being split and percentages are paid to the according publishers based on the user’s reading behavior. The meshing-up is contrary to the content strategy of most publishers today but could become interesting to them as soon as they face revenue in exchange. As a result publishers could focus on their core competency (investigating and writing) and earn from partly "outsourced" delivery, like they often did in times of paper delivery. They could also focus on niche topics to build up competency and reputation in order to be "followed" in those areas by readers through these hubs - a truly capitalistic mechanism. Now the question is what are the killer features to make this happen? 1) The product would have to offer content from various sources. 2) It would have to improve the way readers can consume their daily or hourly news so drastically that they’re willing to pay a small amount. 3) Payment would have to be really simple. I do have thoughts on how to achieve this step by step with a freemium business model based on existing technologies and with existing shared content. I also have concrete thoughts on features as well as an almost finished product design. Personalization is the key. I am looking for developers and front-end developers with state-of-the-art CSS and AJAX knowledge, who think what I just wrote is not just stupid utopia and would like to work on this sisyphean challenge. Who would like to build a team and apply at Y Combinator? I am an ex web developer and UI designer and recent MBA graduate and Xoogler from Germany. Poll: approx. 34 % of users are willing to pay 2-5 USD/month Mashable - The New York Times Asks Readers If They’d Pay For Online Version (http://mashable.com/2009/07/09/new-york-times-online-subscription http://mashable.com/2009/07/09/new-york-times-online-subscri...) The New York Times - Let’s Invent an iTunes for News (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/business/media/12carr.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/business/media/12carr.html) Nieman Journalism Lab - How an NYT developer built a new way to read the news online (http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/02/how-an-nyt-developer-built-a-new-way-to-read-the-news-online http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/02/how-an-nyt-developer-built-...) Google Code's PubSubHubbub publish/subscribe protocol as an extension to XML content exchange (http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub) TechCrunch - The Media Bundle Is Dead, Long Live The News Aggregators (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/16/the-media-bundle-is-dead-long-live-the-news-aggregators http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/16/the-media-bundle-is-dea...)

SueGreenwood 17y ago

I love the arrogance: "We think [newspapers] will mostly die, because we think we know what will replace them..." You sure you want a team to work on the problem - or just to work on proving what you think you know? And why see the answer only in terms of "a content site"? The way we access news and information as individuals is already varied and becoming more so each month - and that's before we start to think about what might be arounf next year and the year after.

dsplittgerber 17y ago

Houndreds of startups are already on work at this one. Thousands of articles and proposals have been written about the problem. Yet no one seems able to describe in only a few lines a business model that does not involve just tossing out a few en-vogue words and other business bs like "revolutionary features" and "bundling" and "freemium". These are not a solution in themselves! Or am I the only one who sees it this way? If it were that easy, "the" solution (just one?) would probably already have been found. There are certain inherent advantages of reading on paper that just have not yet been adressed at all. Stop thinking about "bundling" or content - fitting content to a user's preferences is not the problem. Getting any time-pressed (and therefore potentially paying) user to at least consider consuming news/information digitally is the problem - it's just not efficient enough yet.

catch23 17y ago
the google founders were able to easily explain "PageRank" in just a few words, yet nobody considered their approach during the era of Altavista & Hotbot. There might be a simple & obvious solution out there, but nobody has attempted it yet.
- dsplittgerber 17y ago
  Yes, exactly my point. It will be a simple & obvious (with hindsight!) solution. I'm just saying that if it were possible with the current ideas floating around (not just here), it would already have been done.

dang 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20090928050026/http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090928050026/http://ycombinato...