Outline · Standard · [ Linear+ ] A thought I have been playing with, a bit of an request for help

[Deepone]

I have been talking about this for a while, and wanted to do it for maybe longer time. The dream is about a newspaper or news-site on internet that ONLY has good things. These days most newspapers are after scandals and disasters and so on, so this would be really refreshing. And would potentially attract customers. I am really thinking of actually doing this, and using YOU as a subject to decide how to go on with it..

1) What are your feelings on that, could it work (as a business)?
2) Would you like to follow such paper, even if the news would not be that often at the beginning ?
3) Could you be able to contribute by forwarding such news for me / the site?
4) Do you know where such sources could be found ?
5) What are your suggestions on with going on with the idea ?
6) Any improvement ideas ? Basically I'm going to try to go after the "newspaper" style. Because of the available resources I have thought of first using the internet, then maybe going for real papers and who knows, maybe also as tv-channel later on..

[Radnoken]

I'd have to look it up again, but there are sites that provide free news stories. You can select which ones you pick to display, or even add to your front page using an RSS feed. That's something that can help build up content on the site.

And there are tons of Content Management Scripts (CMS) that have a magazine type theme for them.

As for a buisness, starting out you pretty much have to use google adsense as a source of revenue, until you can build up your site to make people want to advertise on your site.

I don't think pay subscription sites are working as a whole (unless its porn), so unless you have experience in doing that, and the marketing know how to get people to pay for it, then I wouldn't try that avenue. The best example of this is www.fark.com. They didnt have originally, but now have added features you can pay for instead of having to pay to see the entire site.

If you need to pick my brain, just hit me up.

[Awai]

sorry deep but i've got to agree with radnoken that the payment (even micro payment) newspapers are struggling to make a profit from the effort they make. you'd be better off building up a local commerical magazine perhaps similar to the one a few people make in my area which is filled with cheap local advertising from shops and businesses, the adverts pay for the print run and you build in an acceptable margin for your time. Over the medium term you can expand your magazine into one big one or several localised ones and also charge £1 a month for webbased advertising too...

just a thought... :D

[Deepone]

At first I'm not planning to have money grow out from this one ;) The idea was that this would be more to promote talking about what kind of news we are shown all the time. And, if it grows like I feel it has the potential of, then it might turn into business in some form or other - but at the beginning it would be for free, to attract potential customers and maybe some help on keeping it up too.
Basically first I would be running it either from free servers or as a blog-style thing, or even from my own computer, but if it turns out to get potential for profit... then it might be needed to switch to dedicated servers and business models :)
Why this all ? Because I'm quite fed up with the news that we are shown.. That there are only bad stuff reported. And because I don't like the idea that people are just talking about negative stuff.. you might know what I'm talking about.

[The_Ro]

This is a great idea, it's something I have been thinking about myself, actually... News are so depressing, why not get some good news once in a while? :)

[Ratrap]

The idea is great, but requires alot of work...

[spidermanx]

I think it's a good idea, but it would definitely take a lot of work. It would have to be something special for sure, because personally id rather go to CNN.com or Google news or Yahoo news. Not to shatter your dreams or anything, but it's close to impossible to get anything your talking about to get some traffic or recognition with those 3 internet giants around.

[spidermanx]

.www.digg.com

found this site today, basicaly you submit an outside link to a news article and people who use the site get to "vote" for it. very interesting