How News Ought to Be (But Isn't)

[David]

The other day I woke up, it was dark outside and a godamn helicopter was hovering outside. In my sleepy state, I figured it was a traffic copter, lensing some early morning jam on the nearby highway. So I went back to sleep.

Later, I got up to head out to work and didn't think much about the chopper. Until I walked out the door. I drove to the corner and noticed that the street was blocked off by police tape, police cars and at the end of the block was a teevee news truck.

I called my girl on the way to work and asked her to check the Internet to see what was up.

She emailed me back later with a link to the local paper--someone was shot dead, not 100 yard from where we live.

That's what happened. Here's what should have:

5am (or whenever the chopper woke me up): A geolocated news alert sees that I live in a 10 block radius of the crime. It texts me with the info.

I wake up a 7 and check my local news feed. It shows me the crime location on a Google map, with relevant info. I click through to a threat assessment, determine that there is no scary suspect at large and tell my girlfriend she's fine at the house while I go to work.

I get to work and read up from a connected news forum, posts from neighbors about what they heard, didn't hear, what they think, gossip, etc. I log a comment about how annoying the police helicopter was.

I click a "follow up link." This creates an RSS feed that updates me every time some new news comes through on this case--arrests, court dates, convictions, whatever.

By the way, I would pay for this new service. I would pay at least as much as the papers want charge me to deliver paper and ads to my door step. Maybe more.

David

[John Borland]

Amen brother. Funny thing is, it's all totally possible with today's technology, and wouldn't even require a local newspaper (or startup, or whoever throws the initial investment at the infrastructure) to expend extra resources to put it all together that morning.

And think of the potential advertising or revenue opportunities that could come with a group of geolocated subscribers.

[David]

After I wrote this, I got to thinking the same thing: "Why pay for this service?"

Ads would work fine. Slow night at the bar down the street? They could buy a geolocated email or SMS blast to let me know they decided to offer two-for-ones to get me down the block. I'd let them track all kinds of use data about my account for the privilege of being kept in the loop, for having access to their news database.

Oh wait, isn't that what BK has been hollering about?

David

[Brad King]

It's like you guys are reading my minds.

To John's point: I think newspapers are the least likely organizations to do this, although it makes the most sense for them to think as though they are aggregators of information.

The stories that could come out of that would be very cool. You could have young reporters writing the breaking news and your veteran reporters working on the larger stories.

This, of course, makes sense. So I imagine it will be a technology company that ultimately decides to do this...and then outsource the information to newspapers so that their writers can just write.

It's possible, though, I am simply jaded. I'm not sure the economic realities of Wall Street would allow a corporate owned company to do such a thing. It will take a Murdoch, with his own deep pockets, to fund such an initiative.