How Michael Wolff Puts the News in 'Newser'

By: Daniel McCarthy Michael Wolff?s news aggregator website Newser.com proclaims itself to be a destination for online news that ?adds human intelligence to machine-driven aggregation,? distilling the avalanche of daily news hitting the Web into brief summaries in digested form -- hence the site?s tagline of ?Read Less, Know More.?

Wolff, best-selling author (most recently of the much buzzed about authorized biography on Rupert Murdoch) and Vanity Fair columnist, is the mind behind it, and after a beta version was launched in mid-2007 the positive response led to the full scale launch in October of the same year.

It?s news with a twist: the editors and writers for the site don?t produce their own news, but rather cover the web?s coverage with the specific aim to ?to cut through the clutter of multiple sources and sites to discover the most compelling information and ideas and deliver them to you in an efficient, lively format?as well as telling you where to go for more.?

I sat down with Wolff not long ago to discuss the genesis of the project, what sets it apart from the current dominating examples of news aggregation such as DrudgeReport, HuffingtonPost, Google News, etc., and given his recent time shadowing Rupert Murdoch, what, if anything, the old man has to say about a project which in theory undermines the nature of the very business he sits atop of.
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Daniel McCarthy: How big is the Newser staff, roughly?

Michael Wolff: About 20 people.

DM: Is it mostly web teams and then a small cadre of editorial, or do the members all wear different hats?

MW: Well, they wear different hats, but there is a tech side and there?s the editorial side. And occasionally they talk to each other, and occasionally they don?t, and occasionally they talk to each other and nothing is really communicated, or comes out of it. (Laughs)

DM: What was the genesis for creating Newser? What makes it different from the other aggregators and online news sources?

MW: Well, clearly we?re seeing the end of newspapers, and in a way we?re seeing the end of broadcast news also.

So it was this radical movement to this new medium. That?s where people get their news. The digital world is the news world now. And I think that?s incontrovertible. What?s curious is that there have yet to be any really successful native news applications online. In essence what we [as news consumers] have available are the following: the automated aggregators, the Yahoo or Google news feeds or aggregators, then we have the legacy brands - the NYTimes/MSNBC/CNN and so on - and we have blogs.

We don?t really have anything that begins to be comparable to the evening news. And remember in the history of news, news isn?t really a fractured medium. People like to get the same news that everyone else is getting. That?s sort of one of the points about news ? I know what you know. So I thought there was a real opportunity to create a mass market, online news-outlet.

My thesis here is that while the nature of the news consumption and news distribution is changing, certain habits that have always been constant would remain constant; which is to say that people want news efficiently and quickly, unlike most news online which demand a huge amount of time, attention, and sorting.

DM: In terms of the actual absorption of the news?

MW: In terms of the absorption of the news because, online, it?s kind of raw, and in terms of filtering - there?s just too much. So, I thought the key would be that news had to be entertaining, and efficient. I thought that the conceit that people want unedited and unfiltered packaged data is probably not true. It may be true for some people, but most people probably don?t. So I thought: Okay, let?s look at this medium. What are the key changes in this medium? And one of the key changes of course is that the thought that news would come from one source is over; it?s archaic. So look at what this medium does ? bringing together all these sources for one thing - and combine that with what remains constant.

I think then you had an opportunity to begin to speak to not just to the fringes of news, where most of the conversations are going on (HuffingtonPost, DrudgeReport ? whatever your political inclination is) and go right to the center with the goal of building a truly mass-market news site.

DM: Speaking of the DrudgeReport, are you taking Newser beyond the pure play aggregation of news?

MW: I think there?s nothing wrong with what Drudge is doing, but it?s clearly driven by a political agenda. Ultimately, that format doesn?t create a significantly more efficient experience. You still have to go all over the site, so he becomes somewhat of a gatekeeper. But beyond that, there?s no added value.

Now, one of the other things in news behavior that I think remains constant is the idea of a ?digest.?.There?s always been. That?s a potent news value add: can I do the reading for you? That?s essentially Time Magazine 1925, that?s what they were doing. ?We?ll digest the news of the week over to you.? That?s the interesting thing about a digest: it?s the ultimate piece of efficiency, and that?s obviously one of the things that we?re doing.

It?s been a tricky thing, actually, because people don?t yet realize that is what we?re doing. Were not simply offering the first sentence of a story or the lede before you jump to the linked story. Instead, we?ve actually taken a 1200 word NYTimes piece and reduced it to 120 words, and I challenge you to miss anything, frankly. You miss nothing. You get it all.

DM: How is it working in terms of revenue generation?

MW: Our interest, at this point, is not aimed at building an Ad Sales staff, not incurring those kinds of costs. Therefore we?ve done two kinds of things for revenue: we?re using Google primarily, and then literally taking whatever comes over the transom, whatever comes to us organically.

DM: Do you think that?s going to be an aspect that may increase readership, with people expecting that they won?t be bombarded with display ads?

MW: No, no, we?d love to bombard them. Just looking at the economics, it becomes incredibly front-loaded to build an ad staff. And that?s kind of the advantage of using Google in this regard. You?re going to lose an upside of [revenue], but at this point our traffic is growing very quickly ? I think we?re at close to 1.5 million this [November 2008] ? but nevertheless, if I bring on an ad-sales staff on that, and I?m not going to recoup for a long time.

DM: Once you fully understood what you wanted to accomplish with Newser, what came next? What were the steps? How did you decide where you going to take the conceptual vision of Newser and bring it to light?

MW: I wish I had a nice clean answer, that I had a clear vision, but the reality was that it was hit and miss. That?s one of the nice things of working in this medium, is that you can measure what?s working and what?s not and change things accordingly. Newser has been in development for over 22 months, and we?ve made a lot of mistakes along the way with energy invested in certain things I thought - and still do think - were good ideas, but no one seemed to have a lot of interest in, or we weren?t presenting it correctly to the audience, or we haven?t explained it?s value enough?all of those things. And then there were other things which were rather sorta ?back of the hand?, but start to get very popular. It?s unsettlingly random.

DM: In terms of an overall vision for Newser, does the whole team share a singular vision/goal?

MW: This has been a pretty collaborate process, so I think by this point everyone understands that this is a complicated mission, and the constant discussion of what?s working and what isn?t means that everyone stays pretty engaged in this.

DM: What kind of cross-over from legacy brands and/or print do you have with regards to editorial members? Also, how centralized is the whole team?

MW: Well, the editor is Caroline Miller, former editor at New York Magazine and before that at Newsday, Variety, and so a highly traditional background and a long career. And there are a number of people who have plenty of newspaper experience including Leela de Krester, who was also my research assistant for the Murdoch book.

But there are a number of people who have no newspaper experience, or even any real news experience either. Some are not really even interested in news, rather, interested in what this online thing is.
We have a lot of people are spread out because we have the time zones issue so we have people all over the world at this point that are doing things, breaking in their zone, they can easily update that from where they are.

DM: What?s been the reaction from the established news media that have either reacted to Newser or experienced it directly??

MW: The established news media, I think, is moving towards a begrudging acceptance of the fact you have to link now. You can?t just offer your own content, and I think that?s very confusing for them. But I think Newser is one of those sites that say to people: ?this aggregation doesn?t have to be just a big undifferentiated mass of stuff, but rather you can actually create a site and a publication out of aggregation where you don?t have to do any news gathering yourself.?. And [to them] that?s like WHOA.

DM: That?s really a foundation rocker for the whole establishment as it stands?

MW: Right. So the establishment is incredibly defensive to this, and in an odd way not unlike Murdoch when they?re saying ?well how can you do this?? And once you get over the shock [of the concept of pure aggregation] the reaction is ?oh, actually this is a pretty good idea?. It makes you think ?this had never crossed your mind?? And now that they know they know they have to do it, they turn around and say ?can you solve our aggregation problem for us??

The other funny result, is that it reduces aggregation to a function that you have to offer, and some don?t even want to do it.

DM: Do you hope to be seen as one of the early successes, carrying the torch for the future practitioners?

MW: Well sure, that would be nice, although I?m not inviting competition yet. (Laughs)

But even before that, there?s a kind of interesting decision to be made that a lot from traditional news sites are coming to us and asking ?can we carry you?? so there?s a lot of interest from sources looking for a syndication model. Our gut sense is ?no?, that you don?t want to syndicate because you want to be a destination site. On the other hand, in a world where it?s hard to build traffic and get meaningful distribution, you have to consider it. We have no answer for that yet. We just debate it internally.

DM: How do you think the format for Newser translates across international markets? Is it designed in such a way that, say, Al Jazerra will break off and offer a similar format? Or do you think that is totally unique to America?

MW: No, that?s the beauty of the visual take on this, everyone likes the visual aspect [the site is designed around]. That?s what we know about news now: the more visual it is, the more people will like it.

DM: Ultimately, where would you like to see Newser end up?

MW: Well, I?d have to say that ultimately Newser is best positioned at the greatest nexus of traffic. In other words, we will succeed in creating this thing and growing this thing, and we are advantageous to somebody who has an enormous amount of traffic that they can?t quite serve. Who that will be? I don?t know: cable companies (Comcast) or literally anyone who has lots of traffic; even Yahoo, for example. Anyone who wants to take that ultimate step towards becoming a mass-market brand, simply must find the [online] traffic. So we?ll be able to build this on our own steam to 8-12 million unique, and after that you have to find something, get into somebody else for traffic flow.

DM: You?ve just spent over a year with Rupert Murdoch for your biography on him. Is Newser even on his radar?

MW: No, and the interesting thing is I spent the last year talking to Murdoch non-stop, and this is a man who?s wholly invested in the newspaper business, and here I am trying to obviously undermine that very business. So it was kind of an interesting contrast in this discussion with Murdoch?Murdoch knows nothing about technology, what?s happening in the digital world, he doesn?t use a computer at all, doesn?t get email, can?t get his cell phone to work, etc.

It?s one of the things I kind of find endearing about Murdoch is this continued belief in newspapers. I tried to explain Newser to him a couple of times and he was totally blank, it just ran right over his head. He just started to mumble about something else.

DM: I can?t imagine how that would be any other way, given the design of Newser as this new, net-native destination for news consumption. It?s starting at the zero line of the medium, and moving forward ? I can?t imagine Murdoch would have any idea of what you?re talking about, given the way you?ve described him.

MW: On one occasion he said: [doing his Murdoch impression] ?..so so, you pay these other people you get the stories from?or you pay us?? I said no, why would I do that? And he said: ?well you can?t just take it?. He literally doesn?t know anything about it.

DM: After the year you spent with him, has there been any influence on you from his habits or business sense on what you?re doing with Newser?

MW: Well yeah, Murdoch is really a good news guy, and if you think about this, Murdoch is a guy who has created successful news products. So at the end of the day, that?s what I?m trying to do here. One of the things about Murdoch, which is also one of the criticisms I might level at him also, is that he?s not concerned with journalism.

But when you?re in the news packaging business like I am, you suddenly think ?It?s true!?. I mean, journalism is important here, but it certainly isn?t the whole game. It?s a relatively segmented part of what you do when you create a news product. Even from Murdoch?s point of view, he?d never call himself a journalist; he?d call himself a newspaper man. There are a lot of different parts to that discipline, journalism being one, but there are a lot of other things as well. So that?s kind of interesting to me, because now I?m not just a writer, but a budding newsman, or whatever you could call me.

DM: Do you have a title yet for what that may be?

MW: (Laughs) I don?t have a title yet, that?s funny.