The News Hub: a bridge between social media and journalism?

With the grand ambition of “making news better” in a digital age, The News Hub aims to right some of the wrongs of the online publishing world. Delivering a powerful, democratic and free market news platform, as its founder William Stolerman hopes to do, sounds easy enough. However in an industry wrestling with oversaturation, paywalls and revenue models, can this new project make it? We talk to William Stolerman about his plans for The News Hub, expected to launch in the next couple of weeks.

Like many of his professional counterparts, William Stolerman has watched on as his industry has struggled to come to terms with change.

While other sectors have embraced and benefited from new technologies, Stolerman is adamant that the news industry has failed to capitalise on the opportunity offered by the digital transformation.

“News should be more powerful today than it ever was in print, yet the news experience has barely changed - certainly not compared to retail, for example Amazon, photography, such as Instagram, and more. We've missed a huge opportunity to make news better - and it's one we plan on taking at The News Hub,” he told Interhacktives.

A social media network for news

Essentially, the idea behind Stolerman’s forthcoming platform is providing an experience to its users tailored to their personal preferences and the writers they wish to follow, much like a social network but with news and opinion at its core.

It will take elements from all the major social media platforms like Reddit’s upvoting system, Twitter’s followers system and Facebook’s personal feed. While Buzzfeed, Upworthy and more recently UsVSThem have found success by following a highly driven socially shareable model, Stolerman was keen to differentiate The News Hub from this type of website.

“The News Hub should feel surprisingly familiar because, like on Twitter or Facebook, a user can post content, follow other users and has a personal feed. The distinction with social sites is that The News Hub is dedicated to news (no photos of pets, for example), and the users posting content are typically bloggers and journalists rather than members of your personal network,” Stolerman says.

Stolerman, who worked as a journalist before becoming the Editor-in-Chief of a Hong Kong start-up, men’s lifestyle magazine NecesCity, says that The News Hub will bring down the barrier between professional and citizen journalism, focusing instead on content that does well online.

“All of the content is produced by users, whether a professional journalist with decades of experience, or someone who witnesses a news incident, takes a photo and puts it on The News Hub. Each user can contribute and each user can earn money through their content,” he said.

According to Stolerman, The News Hub will be fit for a digital age, designed to address many of the problems inherent within traditional media models that have moved online.

“Our model is more powerful in nearly every sense. It's designed to be more personal as users select their content filters, more international as there is no geographic focus, more interactive, more social with users selecting their favourite journalists to follow, more reactive with users able to publish instantly, more impartial due to the absence of a central editorial agenda and thus more democratic,” he says.

However, the crucial point, is that “users will get the news they're interested in for free, while contributors will get paid for publishing good content”.

Business model

According to The News Hub’s business plan, the top 10 per cent of content in each category is paid for each month, calculated by page views and up-votes. The company will initially pay a nominal fee of $10 a piece, but hopes to pay contributors as much as $500 for each good contribution within a few years.

That is ambitious to say the least - especially without cat gifs. So, as with any new online journalistic venture, there is one burning question. How will The News Hub make money - and afford to pay its writers?

“There will be three revenue streams, the smallest of which will be display advertising. Beyond that, I'm afraid I'm not going to go into much detail about the business model because it's a USP (a unique selling point),” he said, keeping his cards close to his chest.

Stolerman expressed his confidence based on the support he has received ahead of the launch of The News Hub has been positive, which bodes well for the future.

“We have over 200 journalists/bloggers on board for launch. I think it's testament to what we're doing - and the demand from journalists for change, for something better. We're essentially offering journalists and bloggers the chance to publish whatever they want, whenever they want - and if it's good, they'll get paid for it. Having been a freelancer myself, I think that's a very attractive offering,” he says.

Given the task at hand, we wish him all the best.