Alternative newspaper model

I've been reading about the possible take over of the Wall Street Journal by Murdoch with dismay. The problem with the news business is that it, like any other business, is a business. Meaning being at the mercy of advertisers, corporate ownership and the attendant pressure to publish what you're supposed to. The result: a reductive news media that increasingly won't step outside of a set of narrow political and social confines. A media that lacks the ability to do its job properly.

Online this is being challenged primarily by blogs. Through independent bloggers, you can access a wide range of diverse opinions on any issue you choose. You'll read ideas that thankfully fall far from 'conventional wisdom'. The problem is, this blogosphere is limited to a particular group: namely the online / aware. Much of the mainstream misses out.

Perhaps a newspaper could be made that just comprised a compilation of the best of the blogosphere from the day before? The paper acts as editorial and printing, but not authoring. This would provide the means to bring the wide range of opinions and analysis that bloggers are providing to a more mainstream audience. The bloggers would have to agree to provide their work for free, but I would imagine most would, especially if sufficient credit is given to them (plus a link to their blog).

The editorial role could be distributed easily enough through technology. A set of 100 active blog readers (with a balanced set of areas of interest and political leanings) could flag suitable articles, which in turn could be aggregated and included. Kind of like a closed-digg. Different local editions could emphasise locally relevant content.

The result: a very cheap to produce newspaper containing some of the best writing out there, with a range of subjects and opinions that roam much wider than traditional newspapers are able to provide.