Journalism 2.0

And we’re back! My apologies for the prolonged delay between posts here but now that I’m finished writing my latest book, I’m ready to resume at least semi-regular blogging. I will be combining excerpts from my upcoming book, Entrepreneurial Journalism (due out in Oct.-Nov.) along with observations and tidbits on interesting news startups.

Today’s topic is The Daily Dot, a site that launched yesterday with an aim of covering the social communities on YouTube, Reddit and the rest as if they were your hometown and The Daily Dot was your hometown newspaper. It is an innovative concept and the founders certainly have the chops to pull it off. Forbes writer Tomio Geron notes it may be a bit of stretch, but “it is true that most of these communities have not been covered much at all–outside of maybe academia.”

The Daily Dot is planning beat coverage of online communities such as Etsy, Reddit, Tumblr, YouTube and even 4chan. The site will also attempt to cover Twitter, Facebook and Google like communities which I think will be more difficult, especially the latter two. As ReadWriteWeb senior writer Marshall Kirkpatrick points out, the site is using some interesting data mining techniques to assist in its coverage. So maybe they will find a way to efficiently discover signal among the noise.

The Austin-based startup has a staff of 25 (about half work virtually) and is funded by less than $600,000 in friends and family financing. It appears to be aiming for a traditional advertising revenue as its business model. CEO Nick White, a former VP with Sandusky Newspapers, told Kirkpatrick that the goal is to master “the art of social web community data analysis” and use it to “build a leading, profitable media organization.” The Dotcould then offer it as a service for other companies.

A diversified revenue model is highly recommended, for The Daily Dot or any other news startup. The online advertising market has simply become too crowded. Considering the popularity of the sites the Dot plans to cover, it appears to have found an audience-attracting topic area. Executing the vision day in and day out is the next challenge, for building a sustainable audience is no easy task, even if you have launch articles on Mashable and GigaOm.