Interesting article in Forbes today: “Owning the News.”
I think there are some positive and negative aspects to this.
Positive:
- We need an entrepreneurial spirit to thrive in journalism. Hands down. May a thousand flowers bloom.
- Curious to learn more about the “custom reporting”–an on-demand service where clients can hire GNE correspondents to generate custom news reports. (see negative to this). I do think ala-cart journalism as a concept needs to be experimented with and understood by the larger industry.
- Sounds like he’s building an alternative to AP, which as I’ve noted needs competition and is outdated.
Negative:
- Using foreign correspondents might not be the best way to go (parachute journalism is lame compared to a using journalist who is FROM that region already ie: Global Voices).
- For-profit journalism has a bottom-line. That means the content, in the end, will always come second to making a profit. This aspect could very easily twist any “on-demand” products. This is why spot.us is a nonprofit that limits how much people can donate. We will never let pure money/economics determine editorial content.
- EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS. I’d hardly call that a startup. I could use 1/10th of that and get a proof of concept for spot.us or a whole slew of other concepts. Money doesn’t solve anything – which is why investors should be much wiser with it. I get negative reactions to any journalism startup that doesn’t follow the bootstrap philosophy.
Just some thoughts off the top of my head.
I wish the Global News Enterprise the best of luck.