This is great stuff. A few things strike me, one being the focus on
hyperlocal. It is a good idea and about 6 years ago the P-I launched an
effort called Webtowns to provide info on each of the local neighborhoods in
the city. Great idea. Poorly executed.

They never staffed it, and the Webtowns pages died a slow death. Lesson
learned: to do this right, you’ve got to have boots on the street doing
work.

As an old-fashioned beat reporter, that’s what drives me.

The other thing that struck me was your comment about journalist/bloggers
getting to investigations faster because they are more engaged in their
communities. I have certainly found this, breaking stories on my beat about
Entellium, Count Me In, Mod Systems and other companies. The dailies aren’t
really touching these stories, and I have gotten to them faster than most by
listening to my community and watching comments on the blog. I think you are
absolutely correct that aggressive bloggers can get to these stories faster,
and by tapping the community can get additional insights.

My third thought is that The Times, P-I and other newspapers have been
weighed down by their print product, a product that is no longer effective.
Until they make the hard decision to dump the daily print cycle or radically
alter it as you suggest they will not be able to move forward. I don’t hold
out much hope for the newspaper on this, frankly. They have been slow to
react to the Web and most still see themselves as print newspapers rather
than information companies.

I think they may go half way there or 25 percent of the way there, but like
you said about skydiving: you can’t just jump out of the plane half way. Got
to go full in.

Monopolistic businesses that are led by bureacrats rather than entrepreneurs
aren’t good at that.

Anyway, I really liked your analysis here. Good stuff. BTW, in case you
missed it, there’s more on this topic here:

http://www.techflash.com/venture/Talking_about_the_future_of_newspapers_and_
journalism_40221967.html

Thanks again.

John Cook
Executive Editor, TechFlash

Carrie Brown (now at University of Memphis)

Justin Carder
http://neighborlogs.com
http://capitolhillseattle.com

But don’t have an “ad salesperson.” Have a “revenue person.”

If you’re experimenting, innovating, listening and adapting with editorial, you might as well do the same with the business side – ads and other revenue generation.

We at indiconews.com – a fledgling networked collaborative news platform – are trying out variants few of the things you’ve suggested here, although from the start-off I will say that we are not affiliated with any newspaper, but do have strong journalism and communication backgrounds.

We’re a couple of weeks off (very) soft launch – but will be in Beta for a while yet. We’ve been open testing the back-end system with users ranging from the US to China. Once we hit late March, we focus on community ‘accelerators’ – a couple in the US and one in the UK.

When creating the site, we knew we had to obey by the ‘elegant organization’ rule. So we designed it to be open to anyone – but had to push them to fit into categories, ranging from individuals, voluntary organizations, and educational establishments, to businesses, public sector bodies and charities.

Within these categories users are able to define sub-interest/groups; the local soccer team tryouts or results/video footage/interviews, or harbor master (I hail from a small fishing community) weather reports, quota issues/volunteer or employment drives/changes in law – and these guys can follow the news of other communities of similar interests/issues – linking in, sharing ideas and news, creating community news hubs on a hyper-local or even global scale based not just on location, but also on interests and need.

Each user gets a homepage where they can follow other reporters, update their instant news, manage their reports, and set assignments. They can also set news channels – be it community news from their local town or politics in DC. (Well, you may want to know how your Congressperson is doing, and they might want to engage with the community back home while they are there).

Users also get to embed news and link to their blog/website etc. We have also created facebook and twitter applications, enabling users to build their news into their established networks.

Of course some of the ‘news’ posted is of a particular angle and of varying quality but the interesting stuff comes with the comments, the updates, the linking, the right-to-reply’s, accountability, the polls, the ‘tip-off’s’ to cover events… we also have a unique assignment and ‘interview’ feature rolling out next month – so users can help define the news agenda. It will also be of great value to career journalists/news establishments – finding and engaging with ‘sources’. (It’s also going to be interesting to see how local authorities, for example, respond to interview requests…). We’ve even built into the system a feature where is impossible for the interviewee to be mis-quoted, even when the interview is edited.

Clearly, our site is a hub of raw news – but this might be of value in supporting established news organizations.

We know and expect glitches and issues along the way (it’s the only way we’ll learn and progress) but being an independent start-up we hope to adapt to meet the needs of the users and their communities swiftly.

What’s more, we have worked incredibly hard in ensuring we meet local, regional and international laws and at the same time given the user freedom to use the site to suit their needs.

Financially, we have commercial models that we believe will generate enough to keep the site running/moderation etc, but in time we hope to plough a percentage of profit back to the reporter/community etc. Logistically this isn’t difficult; the tricky part is ‘rewarding’ – hits alone is not a great marker and does not reflect the true value – there are a number of variants that we will try out.

We’re also planning the fully mobile platform for later 09/early 10 (funding allowing).

I call it an experiment (we are not ‘instead of’ but ‘as well as’) and I sincerely hope that we’ll be able to bring something to the table and share our experiences – good and bad – as we develop.

I was particularly intrigued by your discussion of social networks. I think that most media groups are looking at these networks as something you integrate into the product, rather than being the engine of the product itself. ( quoting from your post: “the site is a social network first).

Accountability seems key to any such system. As you note, this kind of site would include self-identification and disclosure among those who decide to actively participate. That will be key to preserving the values traditional media is trying to reconcile with the transformative online world.