By Seth Fiegerman, mashable, Tuesday 7 May 2013

One of the most talked about companies for online news right now isn’t a journalism outlet or a media conglomerate, but rather a small startup incubator and investor located in the heart of Manhattan’s meatpacking district.

“I think you can redefine a media company for this century,” Betaworks CEO John Borthwick told Mashable in an interview. “We are trying to do that from the ground up.”

He eventually settled on a few fundamental principles for such a company: It would be data-driven. It wouldn’t need to own all the expensive assets that traditional media corporations do. It would be more focused on distribution, but not tied to a particular method of distribution. It would be, as he puts it, a “loose federation of pieces.”

If you look at the companies Betaworks is currently developing or has large stakes in, you’ll notice a suite of media consumption products, like Digg and Instapaper, as well as the recently launched Tapestry, which aims to create a better reading experience for short stories, and the soon-to-launch Google Reader alternative, not to mention other products in the pipeline.

Borthwick refers to each of these as pieces of a puzzle, which collectively solve that question of creating a 21st century media company.

At the center of all that is Digg, which Borthwick says is the heart of Betaworks’ media ecosystem — at least for right now — in the same way search is the heart of Google’s ecosystem.

Read all: http://mashable.com/2013/05/07/betaworks-future/

By Kirsten Korosec, smartplanet, Monday 8 April 2013

Dutch journalist Rob Wijnberg made an appeal last month to the masses: invest in a digital news site–that doesn’t yet exist–that will provide a platform for long-form journalism and in-depth content detached from the typical breaking news cycle.

The site, created by Wijnberg and Momkai founder Harald Dunnink (pictured above), is slated to launch in September, according to De Correspondent’s blog. The platform they’re creating will be entirely advertisement free and focus on “slow journalism and background stories,” the founders wrote in a blog post.

The creators are developing a digital news site that takes a different approach to practices currently implemented by big media. The site will be updated daily, but will have content focused on more than just the issues of the day, according to the De Correspondent’s manifesto. The news site will not espouse a political ideology, just journalistic ideals, won’t have advertisers, but will have partners and will not go after a targeted group or demographic.

Read all: http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/crowdfunding-news-a-media-experiment-takes-shape/16960

By Rolf Dobelli, The Guardian, Friday 12 April 2013

News is bad for your health. It leads to fear and aggression, and hinders your creativity and ability to think deeply. The solution? Stop consuming it altogether.

Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But important findings don’t have to arrive in the form of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too.

Read all: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli