A fresh start(up)
Plus an interview with researcher Grzegorz Piechota on the future of news customers
It’s a new year and time for new starts. Some elements of 2021, like the subject of our last newsletter, are still with us, but the next 12 months will undoubtedly introduce you to something that you have never heard of before.
The joy of discovering something new to follow, to care about, to champion, is something that I think a lot about at Overtone. While the way that many people read news through social media or an aggregator will of course provide new information (often in bite-sized morsels designed to make you click), the way that systems are currently optimised for quick attention means that there are a lot of stories and ideas that don’t get discovered by the people who should find them. Part of the sense of serendipity, the magic of the internet, has been lost.
Overtone is doing something new to help with the problem above, but we are not the only small teams taking on big problems. This week’s newsletter features stories on the broad theme of “startups” covered by media outlets big and small, some of which you might be discovering for the first time. I also spoke to Grzegorz Piechota, a researcher-in-residence at INMA, who has become a champion of focusing on readers as a (not so new anymore) strategy for older media companies as they take on a startup-y ethos including developing tech.
“Consumers can fund journalism”
Grzegorz Piechota of INMA on the new normal
Quality stories that our algorithm suggests:
Chicago is witnessing a local news rebirth - Poynter
‘An epic failure’: Your Call Football and why sports are hard to disrupt - Boston Globe
‘Why is it so hard to build new housing in Ireland?’ asks Stripe’s John Collison - Irish Independent
Theranos was a fraud. These are the real blood-testing breakthroughs - The Times
The owners of a restaurant employing 4 robot servers reveal the drawbacks – and explain why humans are crucial - Business Insider
When the Brands Came for Crypto: Can a Subculture Survive the Social Media Managers? - The Information
New cohort of media start-ups focus on paying readers, not page clicks - Financial Times
Many countries are seeing a revival of industrial policy - The Economist
Can New Players Revive U.S. Primary Care? - Harvard Business Review