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?