NEWSY is Just Terrible

Posted May 11, 2016

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NEWSY, which started as a project that University of Missouri's prestigous journalism school as a way to 'attract millennials' to the news, was recently purchased by Scripps for an astonishing $35 million in cash.

Astonishing because Newsy's content is just so terrible.

If this is what they think will attract millenials, well, we are all in trouble. (We may be in trouble anyway).

Millenials, as we all know, don't buy newspapers. They also don't watch news on TV. (Apparenty neither does anyone else - but that is another story).

In an effort to 'attract' millennials to the news, the J-School at Missouri created 'Newsy', which is explained in Adweek:

Newsy Wants to Prove Millennials Do Care About News, Even if It’s Not on TV

Intrigued by the headline, I took at look at Newsy's 'content'.

All I can say is: Oy

Lifting from the Ad Age piece:

"Now, 55 Newsy staffers in four cities produce up to 35 60- and 90-second videos every day. “We have an incredibly smart, engaged and large audience that is seeking something different than what’s on cable news and broadcast news,”

It is certainly different from cable news and broadcasting news... it is even worse.. it that were possible.

The 'stories' are little more than wallpaper video and stills (more stills than video) with a cloying wall to wall narratiion explaining the story (and then graphics explains the narration or repeats it). It's ab it of the 'power point' effect on news  stories. 

Unintelligible, terrible, boring... how many adjectives can I apply.

The best adjective I can think of is, deeply disappointing.

Newsy does to television journalism what USA Today once did to newspaper journalism (Best Investigative Pargraph). It boils the stories down to the hard core blech... There is no art, there is no elegance, there is no great writing, there is no reporting.  In short, it sucks.

It is tragic because video is such a potentially powerful medium. It is about writing and pictures, and motion, and events, and live and music and graphics and.. well, I could go on and on. But NEWSY uses about 1% of the potential that this rich medium affords... if even that.

I really dout that this will prove to be of much interest (and certainly of no value) to anyone.

The fact that Scripps paid $35 million in cash for this disaster is, well, incomprehensible.

They could have produced it themselves for about $1.95