It are difficult times for newspapers. First the internet has taken over the function of marketplace and joblist from them and people went online for their news and opinion pieces. And now advertisers loose interest because there are less readers and these companies have less advertising budget. It’s hard to say what the future will look like for newspapers. It’s undeniable though that the need for news is only growing, so it is being suggested that newspapers should focus a bit more on the “news” and a less on the “paper”.
Online the motto should change from “All the news that’s fit to print” (since 1896 the NY Times‘ motto) to “All the news that’s fit to link”. In what way will you find and display the interesting pieces of news and articles? How the online content is created is another story and out of reach of this piece. Dave Winer, webpioneer and developer is always experimenting with new things and very interested in the future of newspapers and news.
He has made a personal newspage with a list of links to articles. These links are shared on his twitter page where people can click on them. The links are shortened with the service of tr.im which enables Dave to see their clickcount. The list is ranked by the amount of clicks, which creates a democratic news site. It’s true that the subjects are picked by Dave, but the clickcount determines where each article stands.
Some of his other experiments are also interesting. He started 100twt, a page with the tweets of the 100 most followed twitterers. I think that mostly was to show that these are not the most active or interesting people on twitter. A good example is Oprah who still ocassionaly updates, but her latest interaction is from april 25th. And even that wasn’t with a fan, but with Hugh Jackman. Also included in 100twt are pages of the people working at Twitter and the NY Times. This way you can see how the company deals with the medium itself and how reporters use it.
Another way to use a similar system is Friendfeed. It’s not only possible to use the very extended search feature to find the most discussed and interesting entries of certain friends or topics, but it’s also possible to view a page with the “Best of Day” entries from your contacts that have received the most “likes” or “comments”. I like these experiments to discover interesting news and articles!