E-Media Tidbits

DailySource.org Daily Source: Can humans do "Google News" better than machines alone?

Tom Regan, former executive director of the Online News Association and longtime Monitor Online writer/editor, wrote me over the weekend to let me know about an intriguing new online news venue he's now working with: DailySource.org, founded by Peter Dunn.

"I think the best way to describe this site is Google News with human editors and higher ideals," Regan said. Indeed, the site's home page features blurbs about current news stories which link to the stories at their original site. It appears that many of DailySource's blurbs and headlines are original -- which may avoid the pesky issues Google News faces from scraping and republishing copyrighted content from news sites. (Some DailySource blurbs are copied verbatim from the original stories, however.)

According to the site, DailySource is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization "designed to give the public the information they need to make solid decisions about what policies to support, to become more aware of key trends affecting the world, to find spiritual, recreational and cultural opportunities for themselves, to choose how to best spend their money, to learn about beneficial health news and more."

Regan explained how it works: "There are four or five of us (all professional journalists) who are paid to go online and find the best news stories from around the world and put them up on the site.

"But here's the really cool part: Peter has put together a large team of volunteer editors and proofreaders to help the paid staff (actually it's absolutely amazing the number of people Peter has convinced to help on the site). So after I'm finished doing a shift putting up photos and stories (we buy photos from AP) or sometimes even during my shift, a proofreader will come on and give me feedback. Pretty cool actually.

"The other thing I really like is that the site encourages readers to send stories into the editors via a link on the home page. So there's lots of interaction with the people who are looking at the site. And you can personalize it. You can e-mail the stories to people you think should read them. They're working on a cool chat function. All that and a bag of chips, 24/7.

"Oh yeah: And no advertising.

"...I kind of see is a combination of professional and citizen journalism because on the one hand you have professional journalists helping to put the site together. But on the other hand it wouldn't work very well without the input from the readers and the volunteers."

I noticed that the site is leveraging a creative revenue option: "Do your Google searches through us. This will generate revenue for us, as Google shares revenue with us for traffic that comes from our site. Just type in what you’re searching for and press enter, and you’ll go directly to a Google page with your results." Now, if only they'd build a Firefox search bar plugin for that, I'd install that in a heartbeat.

So far, the site offers no feeds as far as I can tell. I think feeds will be crucial to expanding its reach and audience loyalty. Also, a brief podcast of daily news headlines wouldn't hurt, either.

The site has other revenue streams as well. Still, it'll be interesting to see whether this model remains sustainable in a year or two. It's hard getting by on mostly grants and donations in the long term.

Good luck, DailySource.