News you want to read without ads
IMAGINE a world where you the reader are able to consume the news you want to read without the annoying pop-up and ambush advertising that takes you down some of the internet’s murky rabbit holes.
This was the world that was imagined during a session at the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) yesterday in Durban. The session titled The Next Big Thing were led by Tony Haile, chief executive officer of a new start-up called Scroll in the US, and Torry Pedersen, the head of publishing, at Schibsted, a media house in Norway.
The pair, addressing a hall filled with journalists and editors from around the world, said such a world was possible and they were at the forefront of inventing it. Haile, whose company has partnered with some of the world’s biggest news organisations, is dedicated to solving the problem of how to have sustainable, quality journalism on a free and open web.
Scroll aims to create a sustainable experience that he says puts amazing content in front of engaged users “without all the noise”.
Haile said they want to pierce filter bubbles and leverage economic models that can afford uncomfortable truths and “escape the distraction economy and focus on what’s important again” – quality journalism.
Haile said the company has shown that it is possible to build a system where news organisations can have a sustainable reader engagement without advertising. The challenge, however, he said was for publishers to work together in driving readers to content they love and want to read.
Pedersen whose Schibsted title is Norway’s most read newspaper and had created Next Gen Publishing products in that country said their mission was to “reinvent our news to deliver and tell the news in a way that makes users feel like they have their own intelligent personal editor”.
He said in the era of information overload and intrusive ads it was time to make news more personal to the reader. Challenges remained however, he noted, saying that publishers still delivered sub-par news experiences for readers; were losing control of distribution to third parties and were challenged by digital monetisation.