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Comment by dmillar | Hacker News Reader

The future of online content is in aggregation.

Traditional news orgs that are making the unnecessarily painful transition to online news need to slim down their operations. Simplify. The future is distributed media. Fire half your staff and pay independent news sources for content.

Arrington has a breaking story about Twitter planning to colonize Mars? Business Week likes that bit of news, and pays him for sole distribution rights. That's cheaper than staffing a tech biz writer that is inevitably going to miss out on some big stories.

In the end, the way to make it is going to depend on the way you allow your users to access content. Format, quality, etc. You have to drive users, period.

Control the content, control the users. Pay for good content, not for good writers.

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I don't get it. How is paying a writer for sole distribution rights cheaper than a staff writer? Keep in mind you've got to compete with other organizations shopping for the same story. Isn't there going to be a very small time frame for finding content worthy of an exclusive deal? When you have writers on staff you're usually aware of what they have in the pipeline and can plan accordingly. You may not necessarily have that kind of access to a freelance writer who could potentially be selling stories to your competitors.

I also don't understand the part about a staff writer inevitably missing some big stories. Can't a freelance writer potentially miss out on the same stories? Again, there's also the problem of being in position to buy the story with your plan. I would imagine in that scenario the odds are much higher that stories will be missed.

There are a lot of holes in this plan. If it was that easy I don't think old media would be in so much trouble. I don't think they're ignorant. I think they're well aware they have a problem, but haven't been able to come up with an acceptable solution.

Can't speak for the OP, but if you have a choice between having one full-time person looking for stories vs. 100 writers and bloggers pitching you stuff, maybe the odds of you finding a scoop are better in scenario #2. And maybe the competition to get picked up will drive prices down so the stories themselves are cheaper to buy a la carte rather than as prix fixe.

Arrington has a breaking story about Twitter planning to colonize Mars?

Actually, that would be Google and Virgin :)

http://www.casadeblundell.com/jonathan/misc/google-and-virgi...

Oh, I was under the impression no other company existed in his eyes ;)

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