woodwing

A couple of weeks ago I met with a company that is in the process of starting a new news organization. It was a very encouraging meeting, because it proves that there is still life in the news media, and there are still people that believe so strongly in it, that they are willing to invest millions of dollars in new initiatives. The focus of this organization is somewhat niche oriented but nevertheless very very interesting….

The organization will not publish a daily print newspaper; they will focus their efforts on high-quality professionally edited content for their Web product and for a weekly magazine that will provide a combination of a weekly digest (similar to The Week) and in-depth commentaries (like The Economist).

The content will be coming from a network of staff and associated reporters located in strategic locations, and the editing will happen centrally in the organizations headquarters.

One will probably ask what is so exciting about this?

The organization will set up a very ambitious community Web site with chat rooms, discussion forums, blogs etc. Some of the topics that are being discussed are posted by the organization, other topics are posted by people in the community. Some of the blogs will be written by certain people in the organization, other blogs by people in the community. Everything is a wonderful free community where everything is allowed and can be commented on; obviously there has to be some moderation, which is provided by the organization.

The idea is to use the information on the community site to recognize what the hot topics are, what the subjects are that currently concern the people in the community, and then to follow-up on these topics in the news Web product and the magazine. The organization will in some cases make agreements with some of the contributors in the community, but mostly a hot topic will be followed up by a staff-writer or an editor, and - very important - nothing will go straight into the main products unless it is professionally edited.

I am sure that other companies are doing something similar, but this is an organization that is starting a news organization from scratch, based on the knowledge that we have gained from the 15 years of internet maturing……

Is this the direction that we will see traditional news organizations move to in the future?