Instead of people subscribing to a newspaper to get interesting articles written by professional reporters, how about people subscribing to a website to get interesting articles written by professional reporters and writers.
A lot of freelance journalists spend time coming up with story ideas and pitching them to editors. With a website like this, they can post the stories online, and if they're widely read and/or liked, they'll get paid accordingly.
The twist is that anyone can write articles. The "reputation" of a writer would play a factor. The ones that are "most relevant" will be bubbled to the top of the subscriber's screen. Relevancy based on stated preferences and/or historical viewing trends.
The $$$ angle. The Internet is rife with articles, opinions, press releases, stories. Really spending the time to write an indepth story tends to have a need to interview people, do research, study the subject, brainstorm the lead and story structure, etc. So... can there be a financial compensation to provide the incentive to spend the time?
I think yes. By essentially pooling the subscription money and then distributing it according to the popularity / rating of the articles. Timeframe could even be done on a daily basis to encourage fresh news...
Well, apparently, places like reddit.com and digg.com already do something like this, only better and cheaper. Since writing the above post, I've become a reddit afficionado...
Posted by: Bub | June 19, 2006 at 08:09 AM