News innovation newspaper ideas

Courtney Sherwood, CAR journalist from the Pacific northwest attended a Portland area News innovation barcamp, much like the one I took my weekend master’s program class to a few weeks ago here in DC.

She posts an idea about creating a business model on a data center at a newspaper that would provide advice to local businesses. It is interesting and reminds me an idea i pitched several years ago to a newspaper group about creating a data service layer backend for local businesses that would help them manage inventory and book-keeping and other tasks, that would have direct ties to a self-service classified, local and national adword, banner, auction and other advertising platforms.

The push back I got was that wasn’t their business. But Web 2.0 was only just beginning then and it was hard to grasp that service platforms and community networking could be valuable. Might have a better chance now.