News on News

One can read a lot nowadays about the News industry and, after a long time, the tone is rather optimistic. There is a lot of investment in news from various sources including philanthropists trying to save historical icons - e.g. The Washington Post, earlier entrants who disrupted the industry - e.g. Buzzfeed, well-established online platforms like Yahoo! or Facebook who want to keep their members on the platform and surprisingly also, from venture capitalists. The type of investment is very diverse too. Online outlets discover the value that journalists used to bring to the table and they tend to hire more people. "Curation" is all the talk nowadays, at least on this corner of the business. There is also a fair bit of investment going the other direction, into tools that analyze data (cutting out - if possible - human intervention). Given the easy access to various data sources, the idea is that there is always a niche audience for small bits of analyses / insights. A recent FT article describes in more detail this trend, rightfully wondering about the business viability of the model. Clearly, the disruption is far from over but at least there seems to be some money available for broad experimentation.