3 ms·

It's our (rndmize and my) attempt at creating a sane approach to the news. do you feel like something like this useful? if not, how can we make it more so?

by arizerg 15y ago

drx 15y ago
This (fact-based news) has been at the back of my mind for a long time. If you stick with it and it ends up working out, this could be the start of something really interesting. What are your plans to monetize? It seems that the NPR model works somewhat, but maybe there are other ways. I worry that the market for nonsensationalized news might be small, but again, you have NPR as an example, so at least there's a niche. Worst case, this could probably work as a hobby, facts are useful in that once you put them on your site, they don't have to be updated much. Good luck. Edit: minor point: sources could be clickable.
- rndmize 15y ago
  We're aiming for a subscription model ideally; we've seen a good number of complaints about how a lot of ad-supported news often has link-bait titles, excessive internal linking, is sensational/poorly researched and so on, none of which is surprising given their primary objective is to increase pageviews. On the flip side, we don't want to lock the majority of content behind paywalls, which seems to be the way a lot of better news sources seem to be going today. We'd like to have all our content be accessible for free, and subscribers would get various additional benefits: no ads, the ability to manipulate charts and graphs more directly (perhaps a way to adjust the scope beyond what we display, make projections and share with friends), mobile app with nice interface that requires subbed account, etc. As for the market - we think it might be possible to serve as a secondary news source for people that want hard info on an issue/event, or the background/context to get up to speed on something (hopefully the range of people interested in this would cross party lines and even into groups that don't have the time or interest to keep up with politics on a daily basis).
mmatants 15y ago
News as a push medium is entertainment. Small-talk fodder. Objectivity is actually undesirable for most of its consumers. Now, making a useful research medium (when a motivated individual is pulling data) is very useful.
- morisy 15y ago
  That's an interesting way to put it. We've focused on the "pull" method for a few years with MuckRock.com, and I'd never thought of that but it speaks to why we've gotten the type of audience/userbase we have.
ctdonath 15y ago
Selectable axioms and interests. If I choose "USA politics" and "deficit spending = bad" then feed me a short blurb when the US federal debt reaches the next $XT milestone. The key missing from news is "axioms": fundamental notions which mold what the reader is interested in and how news is perceived. (Gotta run, more later if I can...)
SkyMarshal 15y ago
Great start. I believe the term you're looking for is data journalism, or data-driven journalism: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=data+journalism https://duckduckgo.com/?q=data+journalism Out of curiosity, what's your tech stack?
Silhouette 15y ago
Good points for me: ++ Supporting facts/sources: relatively objective news sources that back up their material are definitely an interesting idea to me + General visual style: clean, modern, easy on the eye, no major flaws that jumped out at me And some hopefully constructive criticisms: - Context/scannability: even if you're going to provide information in depth, I think some sort of summary and a guiding narrative would be helpful (by analogy with "inverted pyramid" writing style for plain text articles) or I'm not going to know why I should care unless I already know the subject anyway and I'm not going to find my way around fast enough to get into the deeper material - Discoverability: because there is no narrative path to guide me through the content there is also nothing to highlight interesting patterns in all that data or key points unless either they stick out like a sore thumb on a graphic or I find a relevant bit of text in one or other of the tabbed sections; also, there are so many tabs and separate displays that I find it hard to browse while keeping track of what I've seen already - Navigation: occasional visual details don't quite work, e.g., a two-tab layout with two columns underneath, where the tab labels look like misaligned column headings; navigation is generally rather complicated because there are so many show/hide options, and the navigation controls are not as visually distinct from things like static summary/heading information as they could be

It's our (rndmize and my) attempt at creating a sane approach to the news. do you feel like something like this useful? if not, how can we make it more so?

by arizerg 15y ago

It's our (rndmize and my) attempt at creating a sane approach to the news. do you feel like something like this useful? if not, how can we make it more so?

drx 15y ago

This (fact-based news) has been at the back of my mind for a long time. If you stick with it and it ends up working out, this could be the start of something really interesting. What are your plans to monetize? It seems that the NPR model works somewhat, but maybe there are other ways. I worry that the market for nonsensationalized news might be small, but again, you have NPR as an example, so at least there's a niche. Worst case, this could probably work as a hobby, facts are useful in that once you put them on your site, they don't have to be updated much. Good luck. Edit: minor point: sources could be clickable.

rndmize 15y ago
We're aiming for a subscription model ideally; we've seen a good number of complaints about how a lot of ad-supported news often has link-bait titles, excessive internal linking, is sensational/poorly researched and so on, none of which is surprising given their primary objective is to increase pageviews. On the flip side, we don't want to lock the majority of content behind paywalls, which seems to be the way a lot of better news sources seem to be going today. We'd like to have all our content be accessible for free, and subscribers would get various additional benefits: no ads, the ability to manipulate charts and graphs more directly (perhaps a way to adjust the scope beyond what we display, make projections and share with friends), mobile app with nice interface that requires subbed account, etc. As for the market - we think it might be possible to serve as a secondary news source for people that want hard info on an issue/event, or the background/context to get up to speed on something (hopefully the range of people interested in this would cross party lines and even into groups that don't have the time or interest to keep up with politics on a daily basis).

mmatants 15y ago

News as a push medium is entertainment. Small-talk fodder. Objectivity is actually undesirable for most of its consumers. Now, making a useful research medium (when a motivated individual is pulling data) is very useful.

morisy 15y ago
That's an interesting way to put it. We've focused on the "pull" method for a few years with MuckRock.com, and I'd never thought of that but it speaks to why we've gotten the type of audience/userbase we have.

ctdonath 15y ago

Selectable axioms and interests. If I choose "USA politics" and "deficit spending = bad" then feed me a short blurb when the US federal debt reaches the next $XT milestone. The key missing from news is "axioms": fundamental notions which mold what the reader is interested in and how news is perceived. (Gotta run, more later if I can...)

SkyMarshal 15y ago

Great start. I believe the term you're looking for is data journalism, or data-driven journalism: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=data+journalism https://duckduckgo.com/?q=data+journalism Out of curiosity, what's your tech stack?

Silhouette 15y ago

Good points for me: ++ Supporting facts/sources: relatively objective news sources that back up their material are definitely an interesting idea to me + General visual style: clean, modern, easy on the eye, no major flaws that jumped out at me And some hopefully constructive criticisms: - Context/scannability: even if you're going to provide information in depth, I think some sort of summary and a guiding narrative would be helpful (by analogy with "inverted pyramid" writing style for plain text articles) or I'm not going to know why I should care unless I already know the subject anyway and I'm not going to find my way around fast enough to get into the deeper material - Discoverability: because there is no narrative path to guide me through the content there is also nothing to highlight interesting patterns in all that data or key points unless either they stick out like a sore thumb on a graphic or I find a relevant bit of text in one or other of the tabbed sections; also, there are so many tabs and separate displays that I find it hard to browse while keeping track of what I've seen already - Navigation: occasional visual details don't quite work, e.g., a two-tab layout with two columns underneath, where the tab labels look like misaligned column headings; navigation is generally rather complicated because there are so many show/hide options, and the navigation controls are not as visually distinct from things like static summary/heading information as they could be