With The Upshot a new news blog to be launched tomorrow

Jul 5, 2010 09:05 GMT  ·  By

It’s hard to find one business that hasn’t been changed, influenced or completely turned on its head by technology and the web in particular. In recent years, newspapers have been hit particularly hard with subscribers and circulation numbers dropping and online revenue generally not making up for the loss. Some traditional publications are adapting to the new times, but many aren’t. In this environment, pure online publications that understand the medium are in a great position to become the favorite way people get their news.

At least that’s what companies like Yahoo, and others who are betting on content, like to think. Yahoo in particular has been adamant about content which is now central to its strategy. The company is going through some massive changes as it shifts its focus to the core properties and content generation. Yahoo has put together a great editorial team, with many editors victims of layoffs at major traditional publications. But it’s also dabbling with alternative approaches, pioneered by companies like Associated Content and Demand Media.

Having recently acquired the former, Yahoo is now using it as inspiration for a new blog which will leverage Yahoo’s comprehensive search data to guide the editorial decisions. The new blog, which will be called The Upshot, will go live tomorrow. According to the New York Times, the editorial team will use Yahoo’s search data trends to figure out what stories or subjects are of particular interest to users at any given point.

The idea is that, with direct knowledge of what the readers want, the editors can provide much more relevant articles which, in turn, are more likely to be popular with the public. Ultimately, it comes down to money, better read stories get more ad revenue which is what powers many of Yahoo’s online properties.

The approach is halfway between the so-called ‘content farms,’ like the two companies listed above, which pay contributors small amounts for content, and a traditional news publication. In practice, Yahoo’s most visible target would be the Huffington Post which hasn’t shied away from using technology and analytics data to steer its editors and bloggers. The Huffington Post, though, doesn’t have access to the amount of data Yahoo does.