BuzzMachine

I’m going to channel David Weinberger here and say that “the topic” is not a cut and dry thing. I would say that rather than having sections on particular topics, one would be better off making use of tags.

After all, anything tagged “Credit Crunch 2008″ might also deal with “The History of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” or general categories like “economics” and “financial markets”.

I think there just isn’t going to be an atomistic unit of journalism any more. There will just be content, in many different packages. Those could be blog posts (which in turn could have video or images embedded in them), twitter-like microblogging, wikis, or any number of things. The joy of the web is precisely that there need not be one standard package it all comes in; everything is reduced to the level of content.

What Jeff describes sounds like a well designed home page or blog available for each topic. And Adam is right the topic could be something general or based on an ongoing event. Location is important too.

And of course there is no one size fits all template. Some topics will be more visual while others are full of information.

But why this page really sounds better than any automated aggregation of links and information is that it has a voice or a personality. You can ask questions and maybe even help guide the conversation.

It does sound like the ultimate resource to use.

Fraser: My feeling is that rather than an automated aggregator, individuals can create their own packages–using Feed Readers, Social Bookmarking, Collaboration centers (such as a Wiki page or a group on Facebook), and even their own blogs.

Journalists or content creators of any sort will just be able to focus on producing content; and consumers will put them into their own personalized bundles.

For an interesting case study in going beyond “the story”, consider the Bureau of National Affairs (http://bna.com/products/) that grew out of the old “United States News” (now US News and World Reports.)
BNA* publishes a variety of hyper-focused daily newspapers including “Daily Labor Report,” “Daily Tax Report,” etc. Each of the dailies is backed up by weekly, monthly and yearly summaries, books, CD-ROMS, databases, conferences, webcasts, etc. Subscriptions cost, of course, thousands of dollars per year. To the folk at BNA, a story is just one of many ways to monetize the news.

Another interesting case study can be found in TechCrunch (http://techcrunch.com). TC has a blog-like interface that provides a constant stream of new “stories” but backs it up with detailed historical data on all companies covered, databases (CrunchBase), podcasts, conferences, job boards, etc. For TC, the story is just the beginning of the information monetization process.

At the recent CUNY Newspaper Business Models summit, folk from NJ.com said that given the concentration of pharmaceutical companies in New Jersey, they felt it appropriate to have a full time person cover the industry. My question was: “Why don’t you have 10 or 15 reporters on this beat?” Clearly, the newspaper (as a paper product) doesn’t have room for the output of so many reporters, however, if they view themselves as journalists and not newspaper people, they would see that there *IS* a market, a potentially very profitable one, that can pay for the work of 15 reporters providing in-depth coverage of the pharma industry. But, to do this, they need to see themselves as journalists — not newspaper people.

What BNA and TechCrunch provide is “hyper-focused” journalism — the non-geographic variant of “hyper-local” journalism. By concentrating on a small community of interest, they are able to address the needs of that community of interest with a variety of layered products — some free and advertising supports while others are very expensive. We would be better served if newspapers were to see themselves as the umbrella organizations that host a variety of such hyper-focused journalism bureaus. (Why TechCrunch wasn’t built by technology desk of the San Jose Mercury is a mystery to me…) Almost every major paper can find one or more local industries or other communities of interest for which they should be able to build a full multi-level information services organization.

Rather than firing journalists to cut costs, what we should be doing is funding them to build multi-level hyper-focused information businesses that go far beyond the mere “story” and view themselves as seeking to be the primary source of news and information for their particular communities of interest.

bob wyman

*Disclosure: While in college, I worked at BNA as a proofreader…

Interesting press story from over my way.
When a Chinese-made cookie press breaks down on the countertop assembly line, a trusty old product from Pennsylvania comes to the rescue and saves a Christmas tradition..
http://www.assemblymag.com/CDA/Articles/Blog/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000221071

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Jeff — I’m not going to disagree with you that this is one possible development for the journalistic form, or that this would (possibly) a “positive” development. But I wonder … wouldn’t a change like this require a major transformation, not only in journalistic culture but in human information consumption habits in general? I by major, I mean MAJOR– going far beyond citizen journalism, networked journalism, changing advertising revenues, collapsing business models. I mean, this would be fundamental. At the DNA level, perhaps.

It is an interesting example but how do we continue to compare new to old when many can not think for themselves out side the box and it is easier for the world to be square the stars to be Gods and web 2.0 is a scarry fraction of their new world.

Desarae
http://www.dveit.com

Love it or hate it, the problem is inequality.

“Inequality on the Web
There are about 1.1 billion Internet users, yet only 55 million users (5%) have weblogs according to Technorati. Worse, there are only 1.6 million postings per day; because some people post multiple times per day, only 0.1% of users post daily.

Blogs have even worse participation inequality than is evident in the 90-9-1 rule that characterizes most online communities. With blogs, the rule is more like 95-5-0.1.

Inequalities are also found on Wikipedia, where more than 99% of users are lurkers. According to Wikipedia’s “about” page, it has only 68,000 active contributors, which is 0.2% of the 32 million unique visitors it has in the U.S. alone.

Wikipedia’s most active 1,000 people — 0.003% of its users — contribute about two-thirds of the site’s edits. Wikipedia is thus even more skewed than blogs, with a 99.8-0.2-0.003 rule.

Participation inequality exists in many places on the Web. A quick glance at Amazon.com, for example, showed that the site had sold thousands of copies of a book that had only 12 reviews, meaning that less than 1% of customers contribute reviews.”

“How to Overcome Participation Inequality
You can’t.”
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html

You can’t because of the 90-10 Rule. Then there’s the unpredictability of innovation which defeats excessive planning. The big guys fail. The little guys fail too, but they move on to the next thing faster. They create the revolution. Successful hospitals specialize,specialize, specialize. Inequality works well because we specialize.

“But whenever possible, please bring me a brilliant specialist.”
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/05/we-specialize-i.html

I’m a chaos specialist. More chaos is ahead, so I plan to keep busy.
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The Dead—Give It Away (and the Getting Never Ends)
“Through the Dead, those tape traders built one of the first “free content” networks ever, mushrooming a fan base that made the
Dead year-after-year the highest-grossing touring band in the US.”

Question. Why are we spending all this money for music? All newspaper websites should have free music content. You mushroom the news fan base.