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The News

How do we help people get a more holistic sense of a story?

The business I’ve been thinking about is the business of the news and how we consume it.

We all curate our feeds on Feedly and engage with what our tribe shares on social media. We often feel like we’re getting a good selection and spread of stories.

The truth of it is though, we’re simply reading the same perspective most of the time from similar sources. Our online tribe is as curated as our feeds and more often than not we are drinking from the same trough. Just have a peek at the Buzzfeed, Upworthy, FastCompany, Salon, Vice and The Atlantic posts shared with you today. A lot of us have those sites pumped into our news readers as well.

Often I’ll be sat with people and the conversation will naturally meander to the news stories of the day. After the usual suspects have been mentioned, I might bring up sites like Dahr Jamail (http://dahrjamail.net/) and the reaction will be one of a questioning look. They’d go home, check out the links I’ve emailed over and more often than not the reply comes back: “I wish I had known about these other news sources earlier.”

It got me thinking: why can’t we have a news recommendation service that encourages one to read up on a subject beyond the typical spectrum?

It would be just like the suggestions one gets on music streaming services.

Except here, the suggestions would be geared towards providing further perspective on the subject being read.

For example, you’ve just read a piece on the Syrian refugee crisis in The Guardian. It’ll detect that you’ve read a piece about this in a left-leaning, British (European) paper. It would then suggest articles on precisely the same subject but from The Washington Times (Conservative, US-centric), Al-Jazeera (Regional), Asharq Al- Aswat (local), Dahr Jamail (analysis) and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (long-tail analysis).

Suddenly, one has the opportunity to garner a more holistic view on a news item. Plus, the onus is not on you to go find it. It’s right there at your fingertips to click on and engage with.

You get to ingest and synthesise. Debate and consider. Ruminate and decide.

I’ve not found anything that functions in this way but I could be wrong. Reccomendation engines for news either work solely within their brand, or pull in material based on some flaccid algorithm that guesses what you MIGHT like to read next.

I’m more interested in something that can analyze the subject I am reading up on and based on that, presents me with a plethora of differing points of view. Featuring multiple sources pulled in from around the world.

The word revolutionary would be ill-used here but it certainly would be a game changer.

Give people a fuller picture.

Allow them to revel in the complex cause and effect of events that shape the world today. You could see ripples of change in society as thinking and opinions shift.

Surely having someone go from merely relying on the New York Times and MSNBC for their daily news fix to engaging with sources globally can only be a good thing?

How does one build it? I don’t know. YET.

Heck, maybe I’m being naive. Maybe I’m simply treading where others have before. Maybe this is a thought experiment that has already been solved or does not need solving at all.

All I know is that I’d like to figure this out. I think it could make a real difference in how people consume the news compared to the habits they practice today.

The after effect, I believe, could be quite profound.