The age of infinite, custom news for infinite curious people
David Grant
Blue Engine coaches (from NYT, WSJ, Tribune, Meta) have helped more than 750 mission-driven news organizations to overcome their biggest challenges -- and you can get in touch by sending me a message right now.
In a world of infinite products and infinite media, as Benedict Evans wrote in his annual, excellent analysis in trends in tech, we will have a new kind of problem: "a blank canvas for new businesses."
In the example above, a buyer can ask an AI to generate a dress and, voila, Shein creates one and ships it the next day.
(If you think this sounds fantastical, consider that they already ship 5-10K new products per day, per the report).
Whoa. That's ridiculous.
OK, so what?
What could news publishers put on that canvas? Could news publishers create, effectively, infinite new products in response to the customized interests of curious people?
Today, I come to the New York Times or Politico or my local, digitally native civic information provider and I get their products: Playbook or The Daily or a daily news roundup email or the homepage. Then I can read an individual article, packaged by the publisher.
If I have multiple interests, I have to read multiple separate articles, subscribe to multiple emails or listen to multiple podcasts. This is, let's say, the average.
If I go to the Artifact app or a social feed of your choice, I can do a bit better. I get everything I'm interested in through one feed but I only really signal my interest to the app one person at a time or in the broadest categories - "tech companies" and "the NBA" -- or by identifying a few publishers I already follow.
That's getting toward a custom news feed but with a lot of noise thrown in.
But let's go back to the dress above. Remember: you search for it and then Shein makes it, instantly.
What's the analogue for a news publisher?
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I show up at the New York Times' homepage and it's AI, Sulz, asks me what I care about. It asks me for how often I want it delivered and in what format. It asks me how much it would like the editors at the NYT to have a say in recommending what things I consume and how much I'd like it to hew to my preferences. It asks (fill in your favorite, much-more-creative thing here).
And then, voila, Sulz delivers me my news every day in a custom podcast tailored to the time it takes me to walk my dog.
In fact, Sulz can not only give me Times journalism but summarize the entire rest of what happened in the world through the prism of the New York Times.
How does this make money?
I pay the New York Times to tell me what's going on through their worldview. I subscribe because that viewpoint is valuable to me. (Rinse and repeat for any other publisher or person in any other niche.)
Every day, I get my version of the custom dress.
And if I want to change it, all I have to do is ask Sulz. (And, imagine, you could ask to subscribe to the feed of other smart people so you could hear what they were listening to!)
The trend of the last 70+ years is greater and greater fragmentation.
We have never had more choices to get exactly what we want. And it's not stopping.
The era of infinite abundance in products, not just content, is in front of us. The most trusted brands with the most powerful characters will be able to ride this wave the highest -- so who will go first?
Program manager working on tech and media innovation
1 年Maybe some reporters work might shift more towards “inputs.” In this workflow journalists are confirming and adding facts, quotes etc into a news organizations database. Then some sort of generative model is taking that input and building customized articles, news bulletins, videos, etc for readers/subscribers. In addition to looking for news orgs that speak to their worldview, people might look for the orgs that have the most depth of data in their areas of interest (business, locality, etc.). Good thought experiment about where this tech might go!
American Journalism Project
1 年I think the example above works when the consumer knows what they want -- a red dress with short sleeves, knee-length etc. It doesn't reach those who don't know what they want or for need. (Imagine asking for a red dress and receiving an additional suggestion for a matching umbrella b/c a big storm is coming.) Local news is a product that can give you what you want and need. A custom offering only addresses half this market unless you can pick up on additional signals, continually tweak and IMO offer additional layers (community, services, solutions) the consumer is likely to act on. If custom information has value (and it should if it's done right) it accelerates trust, the most valuable currency.
Is it the year of Googlezon? Epic 2014 Maybe we need less tech stack and more journalists asking tough questions if we want our society to flourish. And how is it funded.
Strategic Comms/PR Leader #climate #energytransition #EVs
1 年Interesting thoughts. What if a user could ask an AI powered search engine for a “news roundup without political bias” or “give me a 600 word roundup from top newspapers on the war in Ukraine in the last month,” etc. It throws the idea of news product on its head, at that point news sources become data and product can be ephemeral.
Head of Audiences, consultant (user needs, AI, product)
1 年Very interesting and perhaps another step in the trend of moving from the social graph to the content graph. What I struggle with is the business model of a chatbot that can provide me with unlimited personalised content. Using your NYT chatbot example, I wonder if it's defensible. Like, what is preventing someone else from training another chatbot so it learns the NYT view/style/etc – and then making that chatbot free to use …?