I find plenty of quality news in text form. What I want is better stuff for when I'm on the go. Radio fails - it's mostly ads and the banal. Podcasts are better but they're not interactive and I can't un/subscribe until I'm back at my computer. Audio books and lectures from The Teaching Company dominate my ipod in transit - but with these I don't get news or blog content.

Maybe the solution is phone based. What if you could call a phone number and hear the news read to you by a good narrator? By pressing keys you could drill down into Tech, World, blogs etc. It would be an opinionated filter of news, essays, wikipedia. Like this http://audiothink.com/concept1.png. With twilio you could <play> .mp3s. First time callers could maybe get x minutes free after which point they'd pay for their callerID to continue working. Not sure how to handle payments - sending phone visitors to a web page might kill conversion. I think bored commuters with hands-free devices and cell minutes to burn might use such a service.