One way to challenge the brain is to stay up-to-date with the latest news. But what will news coverage look like in the online and near-future world? Here’s my view, and a poll to see what you think about it.
Time required: less than 15 minutes.
Currently, Newsvine is my preferred example of how news reporting will work in the this new world (that’s getting old) It has two sources of news: the Associated Press and user submitted stories. All this news is then rated and commented on by the users. Based on the ratings, comments, date and probably some other metrics, the news stories are presented to you.
The result is a very good selection. You’ll find me mostly browsing the Science and Health sections, which I think are hard to find in other places.
The obvious question is: What’s keeping Newsvine from becoming another Digg? Now don’t misunderstand me, Digg isn’t bad at all. In fact, it’s quite good for certain types of news (technology for me), but because the content is completely in the hands of the users, it all depends on their taste. If your taste is not that of the average Digg user, the stories won’t be you’re cup of tea. For instance the health category is all about sex and pot. Because of it’s AP source, Newsvine has a more mixed approach, but conceivably, with a large enough group of people, you could turn its content around.
Maybe we need a feed reader that has a personal voting mechanism. Then again, maybe stuff like that is already out there. Google Reader makes suggestions for feeds you might like (and they tend to be an ok choice), so it’s not too far out there.
In this context, it’s also interesting to note the risk of automating too much. I guess a bit of human triage will always be necessary for correctness, but it will also add character to the news coverage.