Where news makers go to make news
by Dave Winer Tuesday, June 28, 2016

If you break down a news story into its components, it's basically 

  • Quotes from sources strung together to tell a story. 
  • Data, a number of people killed, a vote on a referendum, a score in a game, percent unemployed. 
  • The point of view of the reporter and the editorial team. 

Now, if you look at what's changed in news in the last decade or two, it's mostly in how they get quotes. Reporters used to call sources, or email with them, one-to-one. Now, most of the quotes are public, probably on Twitter. (The exceptions are anonymous, background quotes.)

That's not going to revert back to the old way.

For organizations who publish and distribute news, how can the system be improved?

The tech companies are focusing on the delivery of news stories, not so much on the process of developing them. That's where the biggest advantage is for them. 

But significant improvements are possible in the process by which sources share their observations with the world, i.e. the raw material news stories are made of.

None of the news orgs seem to see the potential in being the place where newsmakers go to make news. Twitter almost seems to not want it. Yet it is the high ground, the top of the pyramid of news production. Big opportunity. 

The NYT slogan is "All the news that's fit to print."

In the future, the slogan for the leading news org will be something like this: "Where news makers gather to make news."