5 ms·

A Public Can Talk To Itself: Why The Future of News is Actually Pretty Clear

20 points by shadowsun7 17y ago

shadowsun7 17y ago
A couple of quick thoughts: if Cody Brown's right about the future of news, then startups like NewsTilt have been barking up the wrong tree. I suspect that he's on to something here (and his mentor, Clay Shirky, is pretty supportive of the startup he's doing - Kommons). Bob Stein, from Future of the Book: "I just read his blog post announcing the new venture, and find myself deeply disturbed." (http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2009/10/theres_no_such_thing_as_an_amo.html http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2009/10/theres_...)
dagw 17y ago
I think the future of news will be a two tiered system. The daily "news in real-time" will be handled by entities like the one the article talks about. Then there will be a second tier made up more traditional news organizations. This second tier will either get out of, or decrease their focus on publishing day to day news (perhaps even syndicating it from the first tier companies) and instead focus on deeper analysis and long term investigative reporting. Basically the 'why' rather than the 'what'. Think the Economist and similar magazines. At the end of the day I think the web will, more or less, kill of the daily newspaper, and the daily newspapers will become weekly newspapers. And I think it will be a win for everybody, especially journalists who now don't have to be sent to cover every minor event, but can focus on the deeper stories, which is where their strength and interest ostensibly lies.
- shadowsun7 17y ago
  Agreed. Incidentally, Ezra Klein recently (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/04/what_makes_npr_and_the_economi.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/04/what_mak...) talked about what made the Economist and the NPR so special, and concluded that: "...This is a need that is going largely unmet. Both the Economist and NPR are imperfect products, but that's fundamentally what they're doing. It's not quite newsgathering, and it's not straight opinion, though there's occasionally opinion in there. It's analysis. It's how to understand the stuff that other people are reporting and opining. " Newspapers of the future will probably attempt to answer the question: "here's what happened, now here's why."
  - billybob 17y ago
    I hope so. This is the kind of reporting I enjoy most. I would also love to see the "10 shocking ways your toddler may die - more at 11" kinds of crap end. And I want a pony.
jimbokun 17y ago
"A good example of an interface that already exists that fosters impartiality is Wikipedia. Through the interface, user culture, and the general architecture of the site, Jimmy Wales created a battleground for millions of politically charged groups and individuals to collaborate and come to points of pragmatic consensus. The result is an encyclopedia with a depth and range their trustee counterpart would have never been able to produce. It will take a different type of impartial architecture to accomplish this for news but the potential is evident." So, is kommons.org a Wikipedia for news? I tried clicking the link, but didn't care enough to actually register, and there is nothing to see there without registering. If not, "Wikipedia of news" sounds like a great elevator pitch for a startup. Although, I don't know if it can actually be a growth business. Like the original Wikipedia, or Craigslist, it might be destined to be a "keep the lights on" bordering on non-profit kind of entity. The key would be an interface that allows a consensus to build quickly enough to be useful for current events. That could have been immensely helpful, for example, during the health care debate if there was one place that impartially summarized the contents of the bills currently under consideration, what the opposition had proposed, etc. in a way that was quickly digestible, understandable, and stayed up to date with current developments. Besides (possibly) kommons.org, is anyone else trying to do that?
Kisil 17y ago
His analysis of the difference between the trustee and participatory models is insightful, but he didn't address how what he's building is different from aggregators like HN or reddit. Loosely, it sounds like he's putting together a news-focused forum, which would be different in that its content is hosted centrally. This has been tried; the standard argument against is that the barrier for entry to blogging is so low that anyone who wants to participate already can. Forums work for focused communities, but "news," by virtue of its breadth, seems to defy this type of centralization. It's not that I'm against it in principle, I just don't get the value proposition.

20 points by shadowsun7 17y ago

A couple of quick thoughts: if Cody Brown's right about the future of news, then startups like NewsTilt have been barking up the wrong tree. I suspect that he's on to something here (and his mentor, Clay Shirky, is pretty supportive of the startup he's doing - Kommons). Bob Stein, from Future of the Book: "I just read his blog post announcing the new venture, and find myself deeply disturbed." (http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2009/10/theres_no_such_thing_as_an_amo.html http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2009/10/theres_...)

dagw 17y ago

I think the future of news will be a two tiered system. The daily "news in real-time" will be handled by entities like the one the article talks about. Then there will be a second tier made up more traditional news organizations. This second tier will either get out of, or decrease their focus on publishing day to day news (perhaps even syndicating it from the first tier companies) and instead focus on deeper analysis and long term investigative reporting. Basically the 'why' rather than the 'what'. Think the Economist and similar magazines. At the end of the day I think the web will, more or less, kill of the daily newspaper, and the daily newspapers will become weekly newspapers. And I think it will be a win for everybody, especially journalists who now don't have to be sent to cover every minor event, but can focus on the deeper stories, which is where their strength and interest ostensibly lies.

shadowsun7 17y ago
Agreed. Incidentally, Ezra Klein recently (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/04/what_makes_npr_and_the_economi.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/04/what_mak...) talked about what made the Economist and the NPR so special, and concluded that: "...This is a need that is going largely unmet. Both the Economist and NPR are imperfect products, but that's fundamentally what they're doing. It's not quite newsgathering, and it's not straight opinion, though there's occasionally opinion in there. It's analysis. It's how to understand the stuff that other people are reporting and opining. " Newspapers of the future will probably attempt to answer the question: "here's what happened, now here's why."
- billybob 17y ago
  I hope so. This is the kind of reporting I enjoy most. I would also love to see the "10 shocking ways your toddler may die - more at 11" kinds of crap end. And I want a pony.

jimbokun 17y ago

"A good example of an interface that already exists that fosters impartiality is Wikipedia. Through the interface, user culture, and the general architecture of the site, Jimmy Wales created a battleground for millions of politically charged groups and individuals to collaborate and come to points of pragmatic consensus. The result is an encyclopedia with a depth and range their trustee counterpart would have never been able to produce. It will take a different type of impartial architecture to accomplish this for news but the potential is evident." So, is kommons.org a Wikipedia for news? I tried clicking the link, but didn't care enough to actually register, and there is nothing to see there without registering. If not, "Wikipedia of news" sounds like a great elevator pitch for a startup. Although, I don't know if it can actually be a growth business. Like the original Wikipedia, or Craigslist, it might be destined to be a "keep the lights on" bordering on non-profit kind of entity. The key would be an interface that allows a consensus to build quickly enough to be useful for current events. That could have been immensely helpful, for example, during the health care debate if there was one place that impartially summarized the contents of the bills currently under consideration, what the opposition had proposed, etc. in a way that was quickly digestible, understandable, and stayed up to date with current developments. Besides (possibly) kommons.org, is anyone else trying to do that?

Kisil 17y ago

His analysis of the difference between the trustee and participatory models is insightful, but he didn't address how what he's building is different from aggregators like HN or reddit. Loosely, it sounds like he's putting together a news-focused forum, which would be different in that its content is hosted centrally. This has been tried; the standard argument against is that the barrier for entry to blogging is so low that anyone who wants to participate already can. Forums work for focused communities, but "news," by virtue of its breadth, seems to defy this type of centralization. It's not that I'm against it in principle, I just don't get the value proposition.