Newsy wants to package news online
With Newsy announcing their Iphone application today I checked out the site of this new company (it’s still in Beta) that tries to find a new businessmodel for licensing news.
With publishers struggling to monetize their online content the demand for new models has been strong. From companies that are allready providing tools to re-license content (we will be publishing an article about one soon) to industry moguls like Rupert Murdoch announcing the end of free content online. One of the biggest issues with asking (or forcing) people to pay for online content is complete saturation. Every piece that’s ever written can be found on countless places through multiple outlets on the web. If one is made to pay in one outlet a reader will be able to find the same content for free in thousands of other places.
Among the numerous solutions that are being debated Newsy takes the approach that “every abundance creates new scarcities” and it sees the scarcity in providing news in context. Newsy’s claim is that:
“Newsy.com is a trailblazer in offering consumers context with convenience – we’re the only online video news site analyzing various news sources and packaging them in one easily digestible package … because multiple sources help you decide the real story”
The company wants to combine the convenience of offering multiple sources with attractive packaging. Wired magazine published an article about this startup raising some questions about the model while pointing out a number of risks. Various other commenters have pointed to the need to build more value into content so people will be willing to pay for it as opposed to forcing people to pay for the same old content.
Newsy is taking the approach to add value to he news by spending a significant amount of time sorting through the various sources to build context. It hopes that this will be recognised by readers who want to know all sides of the story. The revenue model of Newsy is advertising and relicensing of its short videos.