Opening up news
There has been lots of talk about the future of news over the last couple of years, and I was lucky to see much of the transition from the inside, as we built outside.in.
The discussion has heightened again this week, stimulated by David Carr’s ridiculous piece in the NYT yesterday (if you can’t access it, don’t worry too much). Carr reverts back to many of the same tired arguments that have failed to save newspapers over the last 3 years - charge for content and ditching regulation. Really, it is shocking that NYT even printed such nonsense. The media response has been scathing (I particularly like Jeff Jarvis’s post - he is never one to pull punches, and has new lead in his pencil since releasing WWGD).
I believe firmly in a future of self-aggregated news - readers curating their own news consumption facilitated by powerful journalistic sources and bloggers big and small.
That is why I was so excited to see The Guardian’s announce they are opening up their entire database of stories since 1991. I knew when Matt went to work there two years ago that there must have been something interesting afoot - and the opening of the platform is clearly the first of many interesting steps.
The platform will couple news with other interesting and related data from the Guardian and beyond - events, listings, place information - and make them available for developers to come and build great applications on top of. By releasing its data set for free, The Guardian is making a clear statement on its perspective on the future for the news business. And directly charging for content is clearly not part of that plan.
At last, something that actually feels like the future.
