The face of news is undergoing a massive change at the moment. Both newspapers and television stations are quickly losing viewers to the internet. The internet now allows for far superior news coverage for consumers and the traditional news companies are failing to stay relevant and to keep up with the demands of the readers.
One of the main benefits of the internet is the ability to personalise news based on the interests of the reader. The dynamic nature of the internet means that as the page is opened by the reader it’s contents can be pulled from many different places so that each person will have their own version of the news. The days of everyone opening the newspaper to read about the football are numbered. Instead each person will choose which sections they will read about based on their interests. Only those who are interested in football will have a football section, others may have a section for dance or karate or sailing or whatever their interests are. People with interests in these niche topics will feel more connected to their interests than ever before and the amount of news available to such people will increase as the demand for these niches increases.
However, many mainstream newspapers have moved onto the internet without understanding the power of the internet. Their websites are merely an electronic version of their traditional paper copy. They only have a limited number of categories that they cover and readers are still forced to read the topics that the editors deem to be ‘news’. In addition traditional newspapers have very poor coverage of many niche categories (on the rare occasions that they do cover these topics). Writers assigned to the task often have very little understand of the category. These reporters write for the reader who has no understanding of the topic and make frequent mistakes and often get terminology wrong. Niche news sources provide much better coverage of these niche topics as the writers are usually passionate about the topic they cover. As a result they are knowledgeable and up to date with the topic and can provide interested readers with a far superior and well written article.
The future of news is in personalised news sites that collect the best news from niche web sites. These sites are able to provide news that is both high quality and that is catered to the interests of the reader. As people become more aware of these news sites, the exodus from traditional media companies to these new personalised sites will become even faster.