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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 r

by 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).

by drx 15y ago

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).