Decentralized Editorial

Stu has a couple of interesting posts on the rapid decentralization of publishing by professional journalists.  Matt Marshal’s announcement this morning that he is leaving Silicon Beat and forming Venture Beat offered another proof point of the accelerating pace of professional journalists who are disassociating with mainstream media.  He follows in the footsteps of a number of other such as Om Malik and he won’t be the last.  I know of a number of other well respected folks in the profession who have similar moves planned.

The reason for the exodus varies by individual.  Many see the rapid decline and commoditization of the news media and want more journalistic freedom.  But a number just want to work for themselves. There is however a universal set of enabling technologies and trends allowing this to happen.  It’s the explosion of user generated content as well as the decentralized publishing infrastructure and tools that enable it.

Demand is growing and publishing tools are being put in place to enable this kind of professional and semiprofessional content to be published at a prodigious rate.  But, the other shoe is waiting to drop.  As we decentralize publishing and eviscerate centralized editorial, how are readers going to find the editorial voice and content that resonates? There is rising demand for technology to replace human editorial. There are a number of approaches to decentralizing editorial.  Some companies such as Digg and reddit are choosing the “wisdom of crowds” approach by measuring what people “vote” for, others such as Google News are using machine algorithms to filter and rank.  But I think the most satisfying one will be a hybrid that aggregates and filters based on algorithms and collaborative filtering but goes further by adding the magic of the individual’s editorial voice.  The magic of publications like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times (plus every publication with which we identify) is after all, the voice of the editorial staff.  The need for that kind of voice isn’t going away, it’s just getting decentralized.

I became intrigued and convinced of this trend some time ago and have been fortunate enough to be involved as an investor and board member with a company, The Personal Bee, innovating in this area.  Next week the company will be launching a new version of the product that will enable journalists like Matt to not only publish more effectively, but also to act as micro decentralized editors for readers who are interested in their viewpoints and “voice” across topic areas and content not just through the content they produce.

I suspect this is just the beginning of whole new set of decentralized editorial tools and services to come.  Would love to hear of other ideas in the space.