The newspaper all to myself

 
Internet Dailyme.com is a virtual newspaper that can be compiled into a personal newspaper from around 2000 sources. An ambitious project from the USA. 
The term "The Daily Me" is used in English specialist literature to describe a very specific form of newspaper project: This refers to the online newspaper that is updated at any time and tailored to personal needs. Ever since newspaper publishers discovered the Internet, they have been looking for ways to offer their target groups personalized home pages or newspapers. To date, however, all efforts have been hampered by the often inadequate selection of information presented. The majority of offers fail due to the inability to recognize context and connections. The added value compared to traditional media is correspondingly low. Now a project in the USA is making a name for itself that is well on the way to meeting the high standards of a personal newspaper. The website is called Dailyme.com and was launched in October last year. The creators have set themselves the goal of putting together a personalized offer for each user from around 2000 sources.
The service is in principle nothing new if you look at the numerous information services that are already struggling to survive. US newspapers in particular, such as the New York Times, already offer a comprehensive news service tailored to personal preferences with services such as MyTimes. Such information services are also establishing themselves outside the USA. In England, "Daily Me" projects from the tabloid The Sun and the daily newspaper The Telegraph are enjoying great demand.
However, Dailyme.com differs from such offers with details that make media consumption much easier. For example, users have the option of having the content sent to them by e-mail and in a printer-friendly format. The creators of Dailyme.com are of the opinion that many readers prefer to consume news on paper rather than on a screen. Another added value compared to the information services of the newspaper houses is the linking to original sources. Although many newspapers have opened their archives and overcome their fear of contact with the Internet, publishers still generally pursue a restrictive linking policy.
Dailyme.com founder Eduardo Hauser says his project is not intended to compete with newspapers. Rather, he wants to steer the daily flood of news in an orderly fashion and ensure a balanced mix. According to Hauser, there is a big difference between the content of newspapers and that of the online world in terms of format and editorial performance.
In order to guarantee a service tailored to the respective needs, the creators have analyzed the news on offer both online and offline. It took a whole year to develop an algorithm that accurately selects the vast amount of information like a giant funnel. The site processes between 120,000 and 150,000 articles a day. However, the average user only reads 10 to 15 articles a day.
Dailyme.com therefore offers news filters to sort content. Various categories such as original source, keywords and text length are stored for each article. Longer articles, for example, are not included in the print-friendly version of Dailyme.com.
"The internet and the world of newspapers invite you on great journeys of discovery," says Hauser. That's why the creators have programmed the site so that users can look up categories such as "Computerists", "Strictly Sport" or "Chic Moms" to see what content these groups consume. In the "Member Picks" categories, users can even research which sources individual readers subscribe to. This is presumably intended to counter the opponents of "Daily Me" initiatives, who use the anti-democratic nature of such projects as an argument. We recommend an article in Time Magazine entitled "Boycott the Daily Me".
Ambitious goalsDailyme.com wants to be active on two fronts in the news market. Eduardo Hauser does not expect newspaper readers to cancel their subscriptions because of Dailyme.com, but to use the service as a complementary offering. Among young Internet users, however, Dailyme.com wants to become the leading news source. Especially among those who are not willing to pay for newspaper content. And that makes Dailyme.com extremely attractive, because news consumption is free. Of the nearly 2000 sources, 10 percent are from newspapers, which provide 85 percent of the aggregated content. This content is free because Dailyme.com has partnered with the majority of newspapers from the media companies Gannett, McClatchy and the Associated Press.
Prominent newcomerIn order for the project to gain journalistic weight, the ambitious start-up recently announced a prominent newcomer. Former Yahoo news boss Neil Budde has joined the team to further develop the newspaper project. Budde writes in his weblog: "We have an exciting time ahead of us. We are only at the beginning of digital news consumption."
Christian Lüscher