how to adapt the practice and business of journalism to the Web

Take a lesson from Google: The Web is the platform (a TechCrunch remix)

A remixed quote of a quote from Jeff Huber, Google’s vice pres. of engineering (via TechCrunch):

What we see is applications customer attention fundamentally changing. Just like the model for content changed from monolithic news sites trying to trap customer attention, now applications are attention is going to be feeds and containers.

A lot that you have heard here is about platforms destination sites that trap customer attention and who is going to win. That is Paleolithic thinking. The Web has already won. The web is the Platform. So let’s go build the programmable Web.

Even if your content goes everywhere on the Web, that doesn’t mean your customers will use it. Mud is mud, no matter what you pour it into.

But there are steps you can take to increase the value of transportable/embeddable content:

  1. Ensure it meets the information needs of the niche audience it is targeting; uh-oh, that takes a lot of work, more than one person can execute. Onto No. 2.
  2. Ensure it can be manipulated, enhanced, cut, remixed, pulled apart, twisted, polished, fractured and glued back together. Make every component of a story “grabbable” (see “Viewing the news as data” at Journalistopia). Let the collective intelligence of Web users — already taking such steps with software such as YourStreet and Outside.in — make your information useful to all of the niche audiences to which they belong (or heck, just let the software, such as Photology, do it).

In fact, if someone can create a make this story into a Web site that we’ll host for you button next to every story, please do so and let me know. Weebly, an excellent Web-site creation service, might be interested in helping out.

In the meantime, enjoy this embeddable news from Google:

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