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In the impending world of digital first, print never there is a shining beacon of hope called Capital New York–a new weekly online publication declaring “This Is How New York Works”. Categorically it falls somewhere between a magazine, a newspaper and a blog and manages to capture the best of each world. It’s well written, entertaining, hyper local and pretty easy on the eyes.
The concept is smart and simple, create a conversation with an already knowledgable audience about things they don’t already know. Eventually they will be covering important people and institutions in politics, media, culture and business, but for now the focus is all on culture. They’re calling it beta mode, but it hardly feels unfinished.
Their concept is clear and their business model is refreshing: “The premise of Capital is that it is possible for a news website to do well by being good” (aka not just rack up the page views with slapped out stories of the latest Lady Gaga who-ha slip). What a novel concept! Really, it is. So far digital success has been determined by metrics and page views–a system easily manipulated by clogging your text with irrelevant keywords, categories, and tags. It’s slimy business and creates a whole lot of garbage, but unfortunately it gets the job done (if the job is proving that X number of people clicked on your link).
We’re anxious to see if a focus on quality content can attract the same kind of advertising dollars as the tragic Perez Hilton machine. (It’s been working for Current TV, right?) Fingers crossed.
