Google has just rolled out a preview of Fast Flip, a new visual way to browse the news. Once you sign in with your Google login, you can flip between readable cached images of news articles without having to wait for them to load. The experience is close to flipping pages in a magazine and over time the site will learn the sites you like. The fast flipping between stories also plays well with iPhones. One significant aspect is the partnership with the three dozen or so news sites and blogs that are partners in the site– the publishers will get a share of the revenue from ads shown near their content. Maybe this is the Hulu for newspapers. Read more and see video of the product introduction.
While tv news continues to lose viewers and fewer people even care about their dying local newspapers, it makes you wonder where people are actually getting their news. From the radio, it seems. National Public Radio’s audience has nearly doubled since 1999. And Fast Company has a great article that tries to explain NPR’s phenomenal growth, saying the if the network can successfully deal with the politics of its local affiliates, the network’s national reach, non-profit structure and digital savvy, might just save the news business.
Its programming now reaches 26.4 million listeners weekly — far more than USA Today’s 2.3 million daily circ or Fox News’ 2.8 million prime-time audience. When newspapers were closing bureaus, NPR was opening them, and now runs 38 around the world, better than CNN. It has 860 member stations — “boots on the ground in every town” that no newspaper or TV network can claim.
And with the recent appointment of Vivian Schiller- the former general manager of NYTimes.com- as the new CEO, NPR will probably continue to expand its already robust web and mobile products.
