I have a plethora of issues with the consumption of news network news. I don't trust news people to be competent or fair. By the time I get wind of a story I should really know about, I can only find stories about the ramifications caused by the byproducts of the actual event. And for the most part, I'm not that interested in the fluffity fluff that editors/directors have to fill their papers/newscasts/web pages with.
For these reasons, I only have three news sources - Wikipedia, the Onion, and my friend Fred.
I'm not sure really the answer to all of these problems, but this idea seeks to fix the fluffity fluff.
What if you have a news feed that instead of based on importance rank (e.g. most important on the front page, next important below that, etc.), is based on inherent importance of the story. Let's say score is given 1 to 100. Riot in Egypt is given a 90+, Quiet Riot reunion tour a <10. Then you can subscribe to whatever level you want. If I'm only interested in/have time for 90+ stories then I receive no emails until something big comes along. Then maybe I'll get two in a row, because another riot breaks out in Libya. Then maybe a lull for awhile and so on. This may be analogous to Aunt Margaret phoning with important family news.
How would the score be determined? I don't know. Google hits? A crowd-sourced news feed? Editors assign a score? Many options could work as long as they are timely.
Google alerts of course exists, but this is still by rank. You know, maybe I am still interested in rank, just on a bigger scale like yearly. If I could be notified of the top 25 stories of the year as they happen and nothing else, that would be magic. Well, actually Fred does this for me, but what about the rest of the world?
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