The Future of Magazines Is Here

Popular Science has been working with mag+ to release a new way to view content digitally. They will premiere their technology with the release of the iPad.

Mag+ live with Popular Science+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Telling a great story

We all love pretty pictures and it's the reason why interactive media is so successful. Here's a great model created by New York Times to illustrate and explain how US Airways Flight 1549 went down and was rescued. This news model packs a powerful punch. It's informative, visually stimulating and an efficient system for delivering content.

The New News Formula

What if you could request the news stories you want reported on? The newspaper business has struggled since the proliferation of the internet and we've yet to see how the news business will evolve. We've become disillusioned with big news conglomerates driven by a corporate agenda and we've become familiar with M. Moore's 'media breeds fear' and 'fear drives consumerism theory,' so it's refreshing to see a new news service that is so pure in form.

Spot.us democratizes the news by allowing the public to suggest and vote on the news they'd like researched and reported. I think it's a great idea because it allows the public to direct journalism. Spot.us currently provides the architecture for the public to pay for the stories they'd like to have researched. They can also suggest "tips" that provide leads for the staff of journalists. Once a story is fully funded a journalist hits the field and writes the story.

I think it's a crafty model that could be further evolved. Future services might be based on the Digg model allowing the public to vote for instead of pay for their news. It might also include a more interactive way to suggest and discuss tips on issues that should be covered. Broowaha is a good example of this kind of citizen journalism. So then my question is will these new formats also use an advertising based model to pay for quality journalists? The answer naturally seems like it would be yes; that is, I don't see myself paying large lump sums to fund individual news stories; but we have to find a way to support the journalists.

Spot.Us - Community Funded Reporting Intro

Cutting Edge Story Telling

We're constantly inundated with a barrage of news and media. Choosing what current events we want to spend our time learning about is harder than you might think in our information rich age. Well, Media Storm has recently created a platform for consolidating issues and organizing them in a friendly, entertaining and aesthetic manner.

I think they're onto something with their site that is based on a great design that gives viewers interesting visuals with an informative voice over. It's easy to get the gist of a story or a subject and then click through on topics that spark your interest.

Check out the MediaStorm website and watch Rocketboom's recent interview with the staff. They're certainly setting an exciting new precident for how we get
our news.