Skimming off the Cream
Earlier today, I noticed that Gordon Edes (who had been at Yahoo for about a year or so) was twittering and writing for ESPN. It seems that the internet is once again causing destruction to established media outlets. Joe Sullivan Sports Editor, Boston Globe describes his experience “fending off the ESPN.com invasion.” And a bit more context from the Boston Phoenix.
The previous model was for newspapers to dress up the locally produced content with AP stories. But, it has to be much more efficient for a company like ESPN to dress up the national stuff with a few local faces. Won’t this happen across journalism’s domains? How many local voices are needed to make this feel real?
My guess is not many. Maybe half a dozen Gawker Media style bloggers doing content aggregation and two really good columnists per city. I think Clay Shirky has been saying something similar.
More (via Kottke): you could easily localize this demo of the future of Sports Illustrated for many different areas, but it would be pretty expensive for any one local newspaper/magazine/website to build and maintain this sort of near-future technology for itself.
