Nashville247 Beta is Open to the Public as of Today

posted by Jett Loe

Those of us who follow these things know that ‘traditional media’ is in a state of…shall we say collapse?

How ’bout ‘restructuring’?

Well, whatever you call it call it, the fact that newspapers are closing, TV journalists have no bandwidth for stories in depth and everyone has a still/video camera in the pocket or purse and can be an insta-reporter – then add to this mix our credit meltdown and it seems we have a perfect storm for something new.

Yikes! What hyperbole.

Yeah, but on the drive home from the Full Frame Festival in Durham I saw bank signs that said “You’re money is safe with us – We’re fully capitalized!”, so we’re in fresh territory here.

So let’s talk about new media.

With the above in mind, if you were to start a local news service from scratch, (therefore not burdened by existing investments like printing presses or responsibilities to a parent company), what would you do?

Would you aggregate the best of local media, (and drive traffic to them via links…hmmm…the link economy – is Jeff Jarvis right?), and commission new reporting by recently ‘laid off by other media companies’ journalists who know their territory in-depth?  I think you would.

That’s what Nashville247 has done.  A news site for Nashville created by former TV folk, 247 is in beta mode right now – aggregating content from across the State and commissioning new reporting when applicable.  Though it’s only early days the site looks great and has become my one-stop-shop for news here in Tennessee:

Nashville247.tv

I like their vibe so much I’ve cajoled them into carrying my Nashville Film Fest coverage and we’ve had a great experience so far in experimenting with new kinds of movie reviews and film analysis for the online age – I’ll let ya know Dear Reader when we launch what we’ve been piloting.

In the meantime, if you’re a local reader I suggest you head over to Nash247 – and if you’re in the media, it’s tough right now to know which way to jump – or walk or run – but I think these guys are on the right track.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 10:45 am. It is filed under Blog, Jett Loe, Nashville, Nashville247, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.