[brutimus]

You mention wanting to be a NYT/CNN/etc competitor instead of competing with digg/reddit/etc. Does this mean you want to be a news producer instead of a news aggregator? Or are you just looking for intelligence behind how you aggregate news (something closer to newsvine?) Also what sort of news? Big breaking headlines? Feature stories (research-based)? "Hyperlocal" news (like everyblock)?

If you're doing "intelligent aggregation" and wanting the content to live within the context of your site, as you say, I think you've got a copyright nightmare ahead of you. There are several sites out there that do nothing but pull together AP content and smother the pages with ads -- I think a few of them are making enough profits to cover the outrageous cost of the AP feeds.

I'm not trying to discredit your idea -- just hoping to get some more details. I happen to work in the news industry (on the software side, but am still exposed to the mess that is news) and find ideas in this area intriguing.

[Gummi]

Are you thinking something along the lines of http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/ with better recommendations and perhaps some way of following stories as the unfold?

I agree that news consumption is broken and there are lots of opportunities for new entrants, but I'm not sure what the "right way" is - I, for one, spend way too much time sifting through news, blogs, tweets, FB updates etc etc and probably still miss a lot of interesting stuff while reading stuff I don't really care about.

- Gummi

[Cheeese]

When I say we will compete with NYT/CNN I mean that those are the users we hope to attract, I am not saying we will use that model. User generated content and content aggregation both need to be there to make a compelling experience.

I don't want to replicate anything that has been done previously, I think we are all trying to figure this out and its going to be an interesting ride.

And thanks for the insightful comments, there are some really smart motivated people here.