Algorithms to replace editors, gadgets instead of paper
Written on 24th October 2008
2 COMMENTS 
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent
When will we see foldable e-paper on the street? Will advanced algorithms and Internet eventually put publishers out of business? – Nobody knows… But we do witness a devastating momentum for traditional publishers, how can these companies reinvent themselves? Are they doomed?
Chosun media, showing off newspaper 2.0
Doomed? Not by a long shot! at least, if we have to believe the marketing manager of Chosun. Chosun is a Korean newspaper giant, based in the heart of Seoul. I have to admit, I never heard of the company before I visited them today. But like many unknown Asian companies, Chosun is a prominent player with amazing proportions, newspaper circulation surpasses that of well-known newspapers like the USA today. The marketing manager believes that businesspeople will always appreciate an edited and selected overview on the daily hot topics. And if it isn’t on paper, it would be on a different medium. And as much as I like to argue the contrary, he might have a point. Financial Times recently announced that their amount of online (paying) subscribers is increasing fast. We got a tour at the HQ, and they actually got excited of the Nintendo Wii again! (has been a long time)
Epic 2015
But if you ask me; newspaper publishers are biased towards their believe that a good paper requires manual work, something that will seize to exist in the future. This three-year-old videoclip made by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson try to sketch that situation. Skip to 6:40:
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By Joost Elfering on Oct 24, 2008
the last video has many similarities to this videos, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj8ZadKgdC0.
the outcome and time frame might be completely different, but the general ideas behind it have many similarities. i personally think that: yes the user generated news will be part of the future! this is with one big BUT. it seems like that with the arrival of user created content the quality of service and the quality of product will drop dramatically.
the problem presented here is that most people would like to have quality information. with such a big variety of news creators, how do we know what quality is and what not! the introduction of the open structure of journalism lets people on the playing field that would have been better of reporting on something less major. and how do we get the right journalist on the right article? and what if the article should be written but there are not enough viewings of that article to be financially attractive?
also knowing that user created content in general isn’t that good, how would you respond to “i just saw a giant flame come out of the building on 2nd street” sound like when there should be: “a fire has been reported on 2nd street and firefighters are on there way, the police have evacuated the neighbors in danger and the fire brigade is on it’s way”. personally i prefer a more professional approach, as do many others. not everybody is a writer (just like i’m not a really quality writer) and in many cases it is just a specialists job to do some of it.
that said, i do not think that user created content should not be created. i’ve seen a lot of user created content that is really good and i really encourage people to do try to make something they want and like. but we do professionals to take care of stuff like news, even if there are sometimes biased. the paper (in this case) creates the dividing line between “i can probably trust you to deliver good articles” and “i have no idea if i can trust you to deliver good articles”.
so in the end there will always be some sort of manual labor needed to bring us the news and we need professionals to provide us with the basic news. i would leave the more local and smaller affairs to the non-professionals.
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By Joop on Oct 25, 2008
Hi Joost, thank you for your reply, and the link to Prometeus. I enjoyed it; “Experience is the new reality” – Scary!
Your comment made me think of Digg.com, while the site offered some hq content in the past, the site leans more towards LOLCATS these days.
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