
YC’s NewsTilt Aims To Help Journalists Create A Business Model For Content - jasonlbaptiste
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/ycs-newstilt-aims-to-help-journalists-create-a-business-model-for-content/
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hristov
I have to say this is a brilliant idea. Currently, smart readers (like me!)
have more allegiance to particular writers and journalists that they know are
good than a newspaper or a magazine. So it makes complete sense for good
writers to strike out on their own and not be tied down to the capital
intensive and debt ridden newspapers.

And of course this is better than the usual blogging platform, because if they
can establish themselves as having quality content they can eventually get
more money or even provide a subscription model for some of their more popular
journalists.

I see one problem however. The major thing that hounds all newspapers is libel
suits and the like. It is not clear whether this type of service is
responsible for the stuff written by its member journalists. However, all
those statements about how they have editors and control their content
editorially can certainly be used by some clever lawyer to say that the
company is liable for any damages committed by any of its journalists.

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benologist
I don't know if I'm reading it wrong or techcrunch missed some details but
this just sounds like wordpress/blogger + "for journalists"...

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qeorge
Sounds much more hands-on than that to me, almost like a record label or book
publisher.

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peyton
...or a newspaper. What they've done is hire a bunch of journalists to write
blogs.

Still, there're plenty of interesting things you could do with a network of
strong brands beyond Adsense. I'm guessing the 80% Adsense revenue is just to
give the journalists something _now_ for building their brands.

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pbiggar
Its 80% of all revenue, and adsense is just the simplest thing to go with
right now. We're in talks with multiple other revenue streams, mostly for
syndication, and better ad rates. Stay tuned.

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zck
This is, I'm assuming, a startup responding to RFS 1: The Future of Journalism
(<http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html>).

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pbiggar
Surprisingly, we came about another way. We actually applied to YC with a sort
of Disqus clone designed for newspaper. We slowly migrated over to this after
talking to lots of journalists over a couple of months.

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zck
I wasn't sure how long you guys have been in stealth mode, so I thought you
might've applied before the RFSs came out.

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euroclydon
News is all about the brand. This is just a reset for the industry, and chance
for writers to entirely absolve themselves from the old management model and
old media entities, and create new, light-weight unencumbered news brands. The
fact that they are being strict with writers and editors means that they
actually care about quality -- just like Apple.

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pbiggar
I was with you til the last three words.

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johnl
Given the even point spread over the comments on this thread, the verdict is
still out. Something's going to work, and I haven't found it yet so it will be
interesting how this pans out. I definitely would want something where I can
grab the headlines I like and the ability to drill down deeper in the
articles.

