Microsoft and next gen newspapers

 
[image credit Nieman Journalism Lab via SeattlePI]

The image above was part of Microsoft’s submission last week regarding the future of newspapers. Sarah Perez mentioned that the Newspaper Association of America asked for ideas from companies who had experience in helping online publishers monetize digital content and Microsoft’s response can be seen in a PDF and partially above. If it looks a bit like Twitter and a bit like Sobees, that’s because we worked together with the latter.

Personally I’d like to see something that’s a bit more like the NY Times reader with Twitter and Twitpic integration. The reason I still buy a paper (on a Sunday at least) is for the reading experience and the above still looks a bit too much like information overload for me. What I’d love to see is that beautiful reading experience augmented with digital breadcrumbs from sources like Twitter. Think of it as the confluence of high quality paper journalism with realtime digital narrative. I’d love to read the official report of the football matches here in the UK in a digital Sunday Times with snippets attached from Twitter and blogs.

That’s what the future of newspapers means to me – the best of traditional with the best of digital.