What might a new kind of newspaper be like in the Social media world? Many people are struggling to think of the model. I have just spent the last 90 minutes with a client talking about this very thing.

Then I had an aha that I would like to share with you - am I stupid or have I stumbled onto to something.

I will show you in a minute but first some points that we arrived at:

• The new will be “nichey” - headlines and regular news are commodities - the more “nichey” the more likely to meet the needs of a community - the more a community is served - the more likely that the community will have a value - the more likely some kind of economic model can be arrived at
• The “reader” will pick from the many niches the areas that they want not the “editor” - no reader will go in the front door - they will want it “their way” - for instance I could not care less about sports BUT many would kill to find a real insider - if the writer was some one like Michael Lewis even I would read it - I want to build my newspaper
• Make it easy for me to find and read/view/listen to great material - make it easy!!!!!! I will pay for my time - I want great stuff about things that I find important - I want a person’s opinion about it all too
• Key being personality - I don’t read the Times - I like certain writers - they stimulate me - I don’t want an institution - I want to relate to people - then I want to have my say
• Comments can be awful - most are crass - many are crap - but what if a hosted community was added - look at Leroy at NPR and at how his community acts - now imagine if this was expanded so that cancer sufferers and their caregivers could speak in some kind of privacy with each other?

I have been very simplistic - easier to talk about this than to write about it. But I think I have found a way to “see” it.

Isn’t this maybe a “Nichey” site? Several writers - not edited but selected - writing on a specific topic - FF is the 10,000 most popular blog on Technorati - so very successful. Seems so - does the model scale?

This is the Corante medical blog - I think it does scale - imagine a family of such sites talking about your town - ploitics, news, sports, food, the arts, key issues such as health, education etc  - - each with RSS feeds so I get only who and what I want.

Then - can I really talk about things that interest me - maybe hosted by the key writer that I like in any niche?

Here is my daughter’s Ning site for a project looking at Kids Food and Daycare - I can see such a site being attached to each Niche so that the conversation extends beyond the comments into becoming a full community where the local wisdom can emerge. Here is where the niche community gets anchored and where in the end the economics become more interesting.

I am sure there is tons more - I have literally just got going. What do you think?