One question I often get is, what does the future market for news look like? So let's talk about that, and also why it's so hard to redefine news.
First of all, let's talk about the problem.
There is funny thing about the news industry, and I think it was best described recently by Jake Swearingen, the Deputy Editor of Business Insider, when he tweeted:
Semafor looks good but also very funny how every digital property that's launched in the past 15 years has to announce it's going to completely redo the way it does news articles and within 18 months most end up writing standard stories
In case you don't know, Semafor is a recently launched news site by former CEO of Bloomberg Media, Justin B. Smith, and Ben Smith, former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News. It is supposed to be a new kind of global news site, but ... well... when you look at it, it just looks like every other news site, and it's not even that global.
I mean, look at this. There is nothing new here:
And so, Jack is completely right. We have seen this so many times. Someone thinks they are going to reinvent the news, and instead they end up doing the same all over again.
But, this is not just true for Semafor, a couple weeks ago, I heard about a failed news startup from Australia, News.net, who wanted to do something with local news.