Point Oh!

I was asked to participate in Nokia’s Ideas Project this morning and it struck me as a good opportunity to talk a little about something I’ve been working on.

Newspapers are dying.  This isn’t breaking news and this isn’t something that makes me happy but it’s a reality.  There are some, like Walter Isaacson, that offer simple solutions, like micropayments for content, but this doesn’t account for the extreme competition in the media right now.  Yes, I may be willing to pay a couple pennies for an op-ed by Paul Krugman but I can get the other 95% of the New York Times’ content for free somewhere else.  It’s an excellent organization that produces an amazing caliber of content but I can’t fathom how they can support their company on ad revenue and little else five years from now.

Broadcast media is in the same boat.  I now watch more Hulu than cable TV.  If it wasn’t for live sports, I would have absolutely no reason to keep cable.  Sure, I’m a techie guy and not everyone has the time or energy to hack Boxee into their Apple TV but soon they won’t have to.  This fairly simple technology will soon be built into your televisions and you’re going to have a tough time justifying why you spend $70+/month on 500 channels that you’ve never watched (if you don’t already).

I admire people that have seen media trends coming down the pipe and been proactive enough to play an active role in defining them.  One such person is Jason Calacanis.  Calacanis saw the growth of blogs and started Weblogs Inc, which was later sold to AOL.  Anyone who took part in online media in the late 90′s and early 2000′s saw that there was some serious growth coming but it took someone like Calacanis to come along and create a network of blogs that was (and is) an attractive enough media property to become a mini new media empire.  To date, I don’t think anyone has built a stronger network of blogs, with Nick Denton’s Gawker Media probably being the only one that comes close.  It has been less of a question of vision than it has been of initiative.

I see content aggregators as the next big trend in online media.  I’m not talking about Digg or RSS readers either.  I’m talking about editors managing feeds of external content within small localized affinity communities.

For example, anyone who has ever bought a house can tell you how difficult it can be to find accurate timely information.  There are hundreds of specialized sources for national news and a few generalized sources of local news.  Newspapers are great for local information about real estate but they aren’t on-demand or tailored to your situation.  Broadcast media can be helpful in finding out about news that shapes the mortgage markets but you have to wait for the information that pertains to you.  Why isn’t there one site in each city that aggregates all this information for you with some basic social networking features to allow you to engage in a discussion within this local affinity group?

I’m also a pretty big sports fan.  Most of my favorite teams are in New York, where I grew up, but I’ve also recently become a fan of the Portland Trailblazers, who play a few blocks from my house in Oregon.  Luckily there is a site that aggregates all the news for the New York Rangers, so I’m all set there, but what about the other teams?  I want to read about the Jets and the Yankees but I don’t want to have to sift through articles about the Knicks, Mets and Giants just to find them in New York newspapers.  I also don’t want to wait around for ESPN to deem them worthy of covering in their national broadcast or Web site.  I don’t even want to think about personally skimming all the blogs that cover cover the Yankees either.

Why can’t I get the media I need in one place without being at the mercy of an algorithm that is inferior to human editors in every possible way but speed?  And why can’t I engage with a community of people just like me instead of becoming a fringe voice on some media property that doesn’t consider me one of it’s core constituents?

Well, I don’t think there is a good answer to any of those questions anymore and that’s why I’m building a series of local community based content aggregators.  I’m creating places where local people with specific media interests can get their content with the only preferences for the sources determined by community ranking.

I’m not looking to automate the role of an editor either.  Editors will still oversee content and make sure it is presented in a way that makes sense for their stakeholder groups but this will be a lean staff and never grow to rival the economic burden of a news organization.  Nothing will change about the way news is organized apart from the simple fact that 95% of the content will come from external sources.

So where do you get your entertainment listings, sports news and real estate information once your local newspaper goes under?  Hopefully I will have the answer in a few more months.

Yes, that is my Big Idea.