Feb. 25 readings

"Striking gold in our digital age will happen for those who create platforms upon which acts of journalism can be performed." David Cohn definitely puts it best when he says that journalism is not the problem -- it's the platform on which we deliver it.
I think his idea for Spot.us is most interesting in that it brings in the audience not for short comments or e-email feedback, but for real brainstorming use. It uses the public's curiosity to test whether stories will work and whether they cover anything that might actually be of any interest or use to the audience. I think that what he has caught onto is a business model that could work in small amounts -- what worked for Josh Marshall in the beginning. The problem comes when they want to expand and don't have the money or audience to fund it. For any real news site, this is a good model to look after especially at startup for funding purposes.
Korr's linked world has me baffled but if he's talking about linking news stories together then I'm all for it. I also found it interesting how he pounded down AP wire's "house style" -- it got me thinking whether a house style for a news site is good for consistency or bad for monotony.
I think it's nice that Jim Kennedy is looking out for the future of news coverage, but I feel like he's doing it from five years ago. He wants to chance content and distribution, which is cute but old news.
Note: Gannon's "1960’s" is definitely incorrect. Old newspaper man, sure. He did have a good point, though, in finding an audience and a community to sell news to that doesn't already have a reliable news source (print, TV, etc.). That's probably overlooked often when people are starting up physical print publications and trying to hand them out to communities with three newspapers already.