YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism

Man, these neighborhood things are all over the place:

http://southorange.patch.com/

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.

I think you're looking at the problem wrong. Follow my logic here. National News will not be reported by local agencies in the future. There's just too much web coverage (they might syndicate some national source but they won't cover it). So take that out of the equation. With that gone what is a local news paper supposed to do? To me the answer is "the stuff going on locally"

So what I would do would be to build a platform for local news agencies of the future.

Define all the local news sources out there: Police Info, Fire Dept. Info, Local Events, etc… Then provide software (web based I would assume) that would allow a business of a few people to set up shop in a small town (or more likely cluster of towns) and deliver the local news. They would have to make the actual deals with the Police depts., Fire Depts, Local Convention Centers, et al. to provide the info but you could make a thriving business just by selling them pre-made software that makes collecting that info easy.

Distributing that news is another area. Again, the paper part probably isn't going to live on. But local agencies could easily make their money off of websites if those web sites were done well. I personally would bundle distribution with the content collection software but you could probably make some money just off software that would create a professional website. Say that supports syndication and is viewable on mobile phones (keep in mind most small businesses are still paying thousands to con men to design static web sites). Allow for alternate distribution like sms alerts and you could have an even more viable product.

You'll have to pardon the long reply but the point I'm making is one that Microsoft made years ago which is the real money in technology is made by those who create software that empowers others.

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

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.