What do you really want from the news?

Every day there appears a new update, a new redesign from newspapers and other content producers as they strive to build a “strong and stable” (see the political reference?) strategy for the new publishing paradigm they all face. However what I think has been overlooked is actually nobody has really asked the reader, what do they want?

Over the last few months we have developed what we consider to be a sublime delivery mechanism for content: our chrome extensions (and it seems the audiences agree, given the rapid growth and superb engagement stats we are seeing). In anticipation of “Generation 2” of our extension platform we want to move beyond delivery and delve deeper into providing real value (and therefore engagement) with the content itself. So to do this, we wanted to return to the basics and question the fundamentals of what people actually want from their news, and the two questions we came up with were:

1. What news do you want to know about?
2. What do you want to do with the news once you have it?

We are literally dying to know your responses to those key questions, and to frame the discussion, here’s what we came up with:

What news do you want to know about?

1. I want to know about the topics I’m interested in
2. I want to know what everyone thinks is important
3. I want to know what my friends (ie the people I trust) consider important
4. I want to know about the things I should know about, but don’t (ie recommendations)

What do you want to do with the news once you have it?

1. I want to read it (often overlooked, and with pages filled with widgets, links and adverts – often quite difficult!)
2. I want to tell others about it, to help those who trust me
3. I want to say something in response, to contribute my voice to the discussion
4. I want to understand more about it, to delve deep into the topics mentioned to understand the context

We consider that covering these fundamentals will do far more to add value for the user than every extra gadget, mash-up or social-media-strategy combined.

So, over to you! What do you want?