idio Platform

We have been thinking and experimenting a lot recently with news delivery, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Wikipedia has already solved many of the issues of news delivery. Ok, it wouldn’t pass the criteria of the NYT’s design department, but it provides a working reference for how we should look at news interfaces.

Last week I tweeted this:

wikipedia is the ultimate citizen journalism news source. near real-time, mass participation, citations, translations, & corrections.

Most people would agree that from a citizen journalism perspective it is a superb case study. Breaking news is added to Wikipedia breathtakingly fast, and some news stories are even broken there. But beyond the content creation elements, there are two lessons we at idio have learnt from Wikipedia.

1. News lives and breathes, and must be updated, or at least connected with the context of later news items.
2. Deep topic classification within news is vital for increasing its value, and improving news discovery.

News is worthless without its context.

As a perfect example of the first point, see this story by the UK’s Daily Telegraph – Balloon Boy Feared Dead. So, as anyone who turned on their TV during this incident will know, the “balloon boy” wasn’t in the balloon, and is very much alive and well. It might or might not have been a constructed hoax, but whatever happened, this news story is, with hindsight, incorrect. Yet there is NOTHING on the page to suggest that this story is now obselete. The “relevant articles” links don’t point to any of the many articles written after the event with the correct version of events. No update is made to the copy to let the reader know about the innaccuracy. And there is not even a commenting facility so that readers can respond. The Telegraph should absolutely still host this story – but it should provide context.

News is more valuable with its context.

An easily browsable context, whether held on the same page as the article, or linked closely, improves the value of a news story. It is valuable for the user because the story is kept current and factually accurate, and incorporates a wider variety of perspectives and related backstories. It is also valuable for the publisher because it becomes a destination page to which readers will return for updates, and it holds the reader’s engagement for longer, by guiding their journey to other related stories. Wikipedia is a perfect example of this. For those with an inquisitive mind, Wikipedia is a complete timesink (and the newspapers would give their right arm for this to be said of their sites!). It has an easy-to-follow topic-based navigation, which allows “serendipitous” browsing; where one can browse from topic to related topic, reading quality content about a broad range of subjects, and then easily digging into niche areas of interest with great depth. There is lots to learn here, but the fundamental element is that topic-based navigation works. More on that in another post…

Context should rely on external sources.

This is the most controversial point for traditional publishers. If the Telegraph had included any aggregation of related stories/blogs/tweets about the “balloon boy” incident, the facts would have been visible, even without the Telegraph editors doing any work. No publication will ever be able to have the full view of a single incident, so good aggregations of external sources always improve the content. And if external content is aggregated and included, why should the readers themselves not also be able to comment on the story – and even change the facts, building the story as it develops? Well… because then we would have another, smaller, less-edited Wikipedia. There is certainly an opportunity for editorially moderated crowdsourced updates, however.

Until then, lets learn to make news more browsable, valuable, and up-to-date.