This is something I've been thinking about recently. If you boil down the 'news problem,' the dominant solutions are traditional news channels (TV networks, new

This is something I've been thinking about recently. If you boil down the 'news problem,' the dominant solutions are traditional news channels (TV networks, newspapers) and sites like Reddit and Digg. I would categorize bloggers as very small-scale traditional news sources, and RSS feeds as a way to combine these traditional and nontraditional sources. The strength of traditional news is partly cultural, but also due to the nature of its content as being curated and vetted by some (hopefully) informed party prior to publication. Whatever is there, can very generally be expected to be of a higher quality than any random given 'social news' post on the same subject. The drawback, of course, is that the only news available is that which the source determines is 'newsworthy,' which is a very subjective and questionable standard. Conversely, the strength of 'social news' sources such as Reddit is in their inherent chaos. The crowd decides what floats to the top, with no real vetting process or curation except within the most strictly moderated subcommunities. This ensures that the most socially relevant topics get 'published' to the front page and into the public eye, but those stories have little to no quality control. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of the "Eternal September," there has been an established trend wherein as the size of a loosely controlled network grows, the quality and content increasingly caters to the lowest common denominator, driving the more invested (and usually the more intellectual) users out, and eroding the value of the network. This has been seen over and over on Reddit, as the mainstream subreddits get overrun with a colossal stream of new users, and any niche interests get sidelined and marginalized. I would propose a hybrid approach. Why not create a news source - whatever category you decide to label it - that publishes content that is vetted for quality (bias, sensationalism, thoroughness, etc.) but not subject area; in other words, where the articles are all good, and any subject is fair game? Layered on this could be some categorized and 'social' voting algorithm, much like Reddit with subreddits, and users could subscribe to those channels which they cared most strongly for, thereby creating their own high quality news source. This is just a thought I had today. It's obviously not fully baked yet. What do you think?