Michael Wolff, the founder of
Newser, had a lot to say about his Website, the future of news,
Google,
The Daily Beast and more...
In case you haven't (already) heard of Newser...
Yet again, an old media man is trying to reinvent his craft with new media thinking. Wolff, who has been covering the media for quite a while as a contributor to
Vanity Fair came up with the idea for Newser as a response to what he calls a "revolution in how people get their news." Newser is a news aggregation website that
launched one year ago and is based on the concept of more news in less time, by adding human intelligence to machine-driven aggregation. According to Wolff, the idea is that Newser "searches the web, reads the stories and delivers concise and sharp summaries - along with links to the full text."
The Starting PointWolff is sure that newspapers and traditional broadcast media will fall to an imminent death. So as a means feed the enormous demand for news he created the online news aggregation site.
Even though there are huge advantages to using technology in the media industry, Wolff argues that "nobody has really developed the user-friendly way for getting news," that is, until he created Newser. The idea behind Newser was to create something that could be fun, entertaining, interesting and all the while make sense - something that was essentially, user-friendly. With this in mind, combined with what he calls "an absolute place in the market" - he designed and launched the news platform, giving editors and writers the opportunity to use the technological tools at hand to produce news that would be both efficient and entertaining.
The News According to Newser: Its Visual, and GeneralThe news aggregation system is set up in a visual grid format so that readers can see the day's happenings pass before their eyes. He describes it as a real-time visual for the day's events, a "kind of narrative through which you can literally watch the day go by."
When asked if
visuals take away from the content - Wolff was quick to state his position: visuals are essentially the life force of news. "I think the visual presentation of news is the business we are in. Newspapers are visual media; obviously television is visual media. News is visual, if news is not visual (i.e.,
Google, or
YahooNews) it's a lesser form." Wolff believes that if you can't visualize (or have it visualized for you), then you are missing out on the world. To him, Newser is a "window to an incredible experience of the moment...", and he believes this is part of what people want. The other part that people want is drama.
If there exists a trend towards more
niche news, as many media pundits postulate, Wolff feels that the trend is backward. In his opinion, general news, news that embraces everyone, is in demand. As a result, Newser does not target a certain age group or demographic. In Wolff's words, "We are one of the few sites that target general interest news audiences. We are not serving up left wing news. We are not serving up right wing news. We're not serving up special interest news." He views it as an "
old fashioned idea," something that works because, essentially, the audience wants "the news that everyone else wants -it doesn't want it to be specialized - they want that sort of pure view into the world."
The Newser SystemNewser's system is somewhere between human and
Googlebot. An algorithm searches sources for the news, then the editors and writers make the final decisions as to what to summarize and publish, summarizing being the site's primary purpose. Wolff sees Newser as a way to bring an "enormous amount of information" to readers, "which is significantly more consumable because we are the ones who are preparing, digesting it, summarizing it, condensing it."
Newser has 20 editors working rotating shifts so that hands are on deck 24/7. Outside of the main offices in Chicago and New York City, Wolff employs people throughout the world to keep up the pace. News has to be instantaneous, so his staff policy is, "if you are out of bed, we use you."
Wolff also describes Newser as being in the business of sources; "If we are an expert on anything; its on sources." Although many traditional publisher esteem that news aggregation sites are "stealing" content, Wolff does not view it that way. He points out that Newser is sending readers back to the original source and "the world depends on directories and aggregators to locate and point original content...to present a literal infinity of information in a manageable form." He sees
Newser as doing a "
more valuable act, or at least as valuable as the creators themselves."
Wolff"s categorizes sites that post purely original content as "
relics of the past" because "nobody wants news from just one source." But he also doesn't see the point in purely automated aggregators that just produce headlines (such as Google or Yahoo) - he views them as "lesser forms."
Not Such a Beast After AllWhen asked how he compared Newser to other sites such as the
Huffington Post,
Drudge, or
Tina Brown's recently launched The Daily Beast, Wolff highlighted the fact that his site is "pure news aggregation, we are not producing other content." In addition, Newser remains "agnostic to orientation" in order to present the news in "everybody's point of view."
When asked about his thoughts on
The Daily Beast, he was quick to offer his apocalyptic view of yet another "
relic"; "
The Daily Beast...which I think is a complete error and hash and mismatch - is just trying to produce an old idea of a magazine,
Tina Brown's old idea of a magazine online. So it's not even a new idea of a magazine - its Tina Brown's old idea, and in my view has no chance of success at all." Wolff continued, opining that both the
Huffington Post and
The Daily Beast are spending more money that they can ever make back; "Someone is going to end up eating that," he said.
News Today Gone Tomorrow As for hindsight, he is pleased with the outcome of Newser - but stated that as with any business dealing with the development of technology - there are always things that could have been done differently, but described it as a learning experience - with technology sometimes you don't know what the outcome will be of certain efforts. It's trial and error. He cites one of the "main management challenges (as) deciding where to focus and allocate brain resources."
Obviously he wants Newser's audience to grow and for them to become "a significant and possibly dominant news brand online." He has no plans to develop a print version of aggregated news and leaves it for the most part up to users' demands.
Wolff imagines the future news landscape as being purely electronic-centric and sees the main challenge as figuring out what works. Opposed to those traditionalists that laud the power of traditional media, he believes that consumer behavior does change - people have always sought their news in the most efficient way possible.
As for print: "The advice is probably not to get up for work today, sleep in and, you know, hope your retirement account will take care of you."
