Newsmill is a step in the right direction

It’s great to see that as we in Denmark discuss the folding of a commodity newspaper and continue to discuss how to keep the print business in business for as long as possible, people in Sweden don’t waste their time but are instead building new and interesting stuff.

I’m talking about Newsmill, an aggregator of news commment in blogformat with a news site design. I have been giving it a slight spin, and I think this is such a great step in the right direction that I’m simply amazed it hasn’t been done in this way before.

There are three things that are truly great about the Newsmill concept.

First of all, they openly recognize that their readers and users are smarter than they are. That they have something of value to contribute. That without their contributions there simply won’t be a Newsmill. There’s definately some element of secret sauce here, because somehow it seems that catering to people’s beliefs of their own superiority actually brings out some of the best in them and get them to contribute in meaningful ways.

Second, the whole site is edited. Basically Newsmill decides which content should be displayed where, and as such it’s a testament to the fact that the editor role certainly isn’t dead - it’s as useful as ever. In effect, Newsmill curates the content out there and present only the best in ways that makes it possible to give current events like the Sarah Palin teen pregnancy story a local Swedish spin focusing on how teen moms are viewed upon in Sweden. Brillant.

Thirdly, Newsmill asks their users to blog on certain questions of the day. This is so banal that it’s almost genius. Why? Because it sets the context for user contributions. The principle is simple: If you ask someone to upload a video - any video - most people will be left clueless about what to do. But if you ask them to upload their best joke, you still provide freedom of expression while setting a context that makes it easier to contribute. Absolutely excellent.

What I’m really curious about now with Newsmill are two things, which we will get answers to, when they come out of their current beta testing: Is this something ordinary users will take a liking to, as user generated content does have a lot of general issues with trust and quality? And will Newsmill be able to make it financially sustainable.

I hope and pray that both questions will be answered with a resounding ‘Yes!’. Because the concept is stellar.

(via Søren Storm Hansen)

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