Boomers remember reading the paper every morning. I still do, only I read “the papers” on my computer. Like many of you, I’m worried that news organizations will continue to decline, and pretty soon we won’t have reporters snooping around and discovering the bad things politicians, corporations, and governments do. Greed, graft, fraud, and criminality will thrive in the darkness. I’d like to help figure out a way to fund news organizations so that won’t happen.

How does this sound: you start with an aggregator (a publisher who collects news from everywhere and puts it in one place; e.g. Slate.com, The Huffington Post). Call it YourNews.com (actually, there is such a domain but at present, it’s crap.) Offer an interesting and entertaining website that the reader could totally customize with free and fee-based apps that would provide a variety of news, such as local, world, science, education, business, in-depth reporting and analysis, and opinion from your favorite thinkers.

The news would be provided by a new, specialized organization which would contract with YourNews.com to provide high-quality feeds from their niche (for example, the best, most insightful, most understandable science news, or the most truly balanced political analysis).

If we did this, my local paper, the Press-Enterprise, could stop buying feeds from world news (which I can get anywhere, and in more depth), and spend the money beefing up its local coverage (which it does a pretty good job of, and which nobody else covers). Instead of subscribing to the P-E, I could subscribe to the new & improved P-E LOCAL application. This way, I would always know what was going on in my local world, without having to wade through half-assed coverage of the world as provided by a cash-strapped P-E.

Revenue for YourNews.com would come from paid apps and advertisers. Any thoughts on this idea?

If you’re reading this on Kindle, email me your thoughts at Lmspreen@yahoo.com.