[jfornear]

Aside from crawlers, aggregators, CMSs, etc., I don't see how a small team of programmers without any kind of editorial insight can really do anything innovative for journalism. The real problem lies in the content, not the distribution channels or monetization models. Technical solutions that ignore what readers want won't succeed.

Look at Drudge Report for case in point: Drudge Report is one of the most successful news websites out there, and it is completely powered by editorial vision. Also, The Washington Post, WSJ (online), and The Economist are doing well because readers value the content. They aren't doing anything drastically different in terms of business models or distribution methods.

All the newspapers with poor content are going under for a good reason IMO. Let it happen, no one needs to save them. A handful of programmers from YC aren't going to shape the future of journalism, journalists will.

[TomOfTTB]

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.

[jfornear]

Sounds like an aggregator/CMS hybrid, a purely technological solution to the problem. EveryBlock does something similar (http://everyblock.com).

[TomOfTTB]

Well, that's just neat on it's own merits. But I think I got off on a tangent and lost my point. Basically what I was trying to say is technologists shouldn't try to redefine journalism they should be focused on building solutions that will empower the journalists to reinvent their industry in a way that makes sense.

So everyblock.com seems to be a statistical listing of things happening but what I was trying to describe was a system that feeds relevant info to the journalists so they're able to focus on writing articles that add insight to that news (which is really what a news organization is for)

[jfornear]

There is definitely money to be made from empowering journalists. But the underlying problem has to be solved on their end first, and all they need is pen and paper.

We can build things like Wordpress VIP, but ultimately it's up to CNN to provide the content that makes or breaks the final product.

The Internet is the new printing press. Paper is out, and bits are in. I think what PG is asking for is some kind of magical printing press. Changing the way failing newspapers' content is displayed, viewed, organized, ranked, etc. is not going to save them.

Whatever your idea might be in this market, I think it needs to be centered around delivering content that people actually want.

My friend and I applied to YC with a next-gen news aggregator idea (but didn't get accepted). Our idea was to create an individually tailored news feed from users' preferences. Kind of like an RSS feed that is built and filtered for you from the comfort of an easy to use web interface. I think something like this would be the future. I would like a computer to figure out what stories I would want to read (spanning all my interests from every source in the world) and display them on my screen every morning.

I just don't think something technologically (or business model-ly) innovative is going to magically make failing newspapers better reads.

[TomOfTTB]

I think you're over estimating a lot of journalists. I know several of them (who work for the 2nd largest paper in the world no-less) who can barely operate Word much less set up a Wordpress account.

Other than that I'd agree with you. It is Journalist's job to do the actual reinventing and they're no where close now. I just don't think they're capable enough to take the current generation of tools and build what they need to do it. Essentially they need "web journalism for dummies" and it needs to be 10 times easier to use than Wordpress.

[BearOfNH]

As I pointed out in a response elsewhere (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=763613) I think a YC startup should supply the toolkit, a turnkey newspaper-in-a-box application.

Admittedly this is not something that journalists would or could use. Despite being (say) as easy as Wordpress, it just won't fit into today's journalist's worldview. But that's OK, journalists as we know them are a dying breed -- many just don't know it yet.

What could happen is (a) the rise of a new class of low-cost, low-profit "mini-publishers" using new turnkey applications to design content+layouts that appeal to their target audience. Then (b) what we think of today as "journalists", both newswriters and columnists, will disappear from the "news" industry. Columnists have already largely gone to blog but the newswriters have yet to change. My guess is that change will be forced upon them, and newswriters who want to continue in journalism will need to adapt. How? Possibly by becoming their own newswire. Instead of a few large wire services (AP and ilk) we will see thousands of individual "wire services", basically individuals covering local, family and/or specialty events. Few if any will be making a lot of money at this, but that's because of the economics of Internet news. The days of Clark Gable (and Clark Kent) journalism are over.

The key to all this is having a turnkey newspaper-in-a-box application that lets wannabe publishers design their own interfaces, choose their own content suppliers and publish on their own schedule. That's what YC should be funding. It's where the money (if any) will be made.

It also occurs to me that there is a business opportunity in helping folks start their own mini-wire-services. Structure the whole thing from scratch. Standardized processes for submission of news articles plus standardized usage and reimbursement terms (Michael Yon might be able to charge more than Jan Michael), but the process of choosing and using their output would be the same.

Maybe that's not the correct vision of the future, but I'm still sure the profession of "journalist" is going to change. Throw out today's molds and take a stab at what makes most sense to you. There's a fistful of dollars somewhere in there.

[ojbyrne]

Sounds like everyblock.com. Or at least that would be a good foundation.

[pudo]

You're right: journalists will determine the future of journalism. I think the more relevant question is whether journalism is where we will get the news in a few years.

At the moment, it seems to me like we're finding new, social (in the W2.0 sense) methods of distributing information that are "good enough" to destroy the business model for news. "Good enough" doesn't mean their information is equal or better compared to the information that journalism yielded. Of course, most of this social news is still based off "MSM" news, but I believe that, as their availability decreases, their necessity as a base will aswell.

I think that sometimes there is a tragic logical error in some of the 'future of journalism' discussion: "The News business model is done. User's won't pay for the news any more. Ads don't scale. The hurricanes themselves won't pay, either. Thus, we have to find a new business model."

This last statement is always there, especially in the RFS and the entrepreneur's discussions following it here. But it is not a necessity. I guess it is a part of a healthy capitalistic mindset to see every industries downfall as an opportunity, but I get the feeling that some of the internets peer production developments escape this pattern: Wikipedia will not produce business opportunities for encyclopedia business, OpenStreetMap will not help NAVTEQ.

Of course each of these examples produces a periphery of new businesses, consulting opportunities and the usual post-processing stuff, but in their core they have de-economized industries.

So I get wary when I hear people talk on how to monetize post-news news. You really won't. Go write a blog post about some of your local communities problems instead.

[alaskamiller]

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.

[evgen]

While I admire the principle you are suggesting, the history and current reality of the new distribution business suggests that this "try to be objective" phase was a short-lived experiment that has no future. Newspapers have always been editorial soapboxes, that is how they get attention in a crowded field. Attention leads to readers/subscribers and readers are the product. Now that we have some pretty good neurophysiology data on how people process new information and with most of the current research suggesting that "opinionated" news sources are going to be the winners based on how our brains work I can't see any reason why the current trends are going to change.

[Alex3917]

If you read any newspaper articles written from the turn of the last century they all read like today's op-eds. The idea that journalists shouldn't express their opinions was invented at the same time as the papers became supported by advertisements instead of readers. The only reason journalists use the phrase "journalistic integrity" is to distract you from the fact that this style of writing was invented so as not to offend advertisers, it has nothing to do with being ethical or balanced.

In a world where all the newspapers are owned by the same people who make nuclear weapons and prisons, the surest path to profitability is to support the status quo; the phrase 'journalistic integrity' is just a form of plausible deniability, propaganda to distract you from the truth.

[mseebach]

There are decisions and priorities in all reporting.

First, often there's no canonical truth. Was the Honduras "coup" a coup or a functional democracy? It's pretty hard to report on it without deciding. The more detail you include, the more you'll come out in favour of the democratic argument, the less, the more you make it sound like a coup (there's no point of including all the details of the parliament deliberating if the essence is that the military took over in a coup).

Second, there's deciding what news to report. There was some criticism of the media focusing much more on set-backs of US forces in Iraq, and only casually reporting progress - the media loosing interest in Iraq. How do you decide what to report from Iraq without letting your own opinion of the war influence you? I can't see how.

I also can't see how you can reliably report on complex political issues without having a deep passion for these issues - and I believe that no one can be deeply impassioned about e.g. the Iraq war without forming an opinion that will be at odds with at least some.

The solution: Quit pretending. Have an opinion. Care about what you write about, and let it show. Stop competing on "most fair" and "least biased", but on "best arguments".

[dsplittgerber]

The Economist is not doing well online. The paper is, its reputation/brand is, its subscription numbers are, but not the website. They don't really care about the website.