Ready? Here's My Formula for Online News Success

I am at the Online News Association annual meeting in Toronto. Listening to some of the speakers at the "J-Lab's workshop":http://www.j-lab.org/ona07.shtml, puzzling through the success of some sites and the failure of others, and putting together what I have learned from four years of doing PressThink, the emerging model I see would combine... √ High quality aggregation within a strong editorial focus. (Like the "Huffington Post":http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-news/ nationally, or Twin Cities "Daily Planet":http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/7548 locally.) √ Blogging platform with the best posts filtered to the front page. (Like "Daily Kos":http://dailykos.com/) √ Original reporting with hybrid strength: amateurs with pro support (training, production values, copy editing, editorial oversight, and traffic), pros with amateur support (like "Regina Lynn":http://www.newassignment.net/blog/amanda_michel/interview_with_regina_lynn; see also my Idea Lab "post":http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2007/10/beat-reporting-with-a-social-n.html on beat reporting with a social network) and pros doing what pros have always done. √ Features with narrow comprehensiveness: everything about something. ("Lisa Williams":http://www.poynter.org/article_feedback/article_feedback_list.asp?id=121007: "That is, a site with some Denver restaurants is OK; but a site with ALL Denver restaurants is better.") √ Forums that allow a previously atomized group--people sharing interests and problems--to connect and converse with each other. √ Crowdsourcing projects that gather information impossible to get any other way. (Like "WNYC's efforts":http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/gouge_map_milk_07.html, or the News & Observer's "speeding":http://www.newsobserver.com/news/growth/traffic/speed/ investigation.) √ Find, prepare and place online data sets that are "available" (but not easy to use), and of strong interest to a user public; let people access and interact with the information by framing it properly and providing the bigger narrative that the data is a part of. (See "chicagocrime.org":http://www.chicagocrime.org/.) √ Reverse publishing: web-to-print, for the highest quality content generated online. ("Read":http://newsinnovation.com/2007/10/11/dan-barkin-news-observer/#more-91 Dan Barkin: "Every day except Sunday, we take photos, forum comments, user-submitted school news, user-nominated volunteer stories and publish it on Page 2." See "YourHub":http://www.yourhub.com/.) √ Absolute commitment to breaking news in the coverage area by any means necessary: pro, am, aggregation, blogging, crowdsourced. √ Geo-tagged information: organized so people can access it by location, or via a map. √ Headlines and summaries optimized for search; open archives and permalinks. √ Put-it-all-together key topic pages that combine... aggregation, original reporting, blog posts, data, forums and crowdsourced information on something big and of intense interest, like a bridge collapse. Like my "coordinates":http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2007/10/09/what_i_learned.html for distributed journalism, these are the coordinates I see for the emerging model of a successful online news organization.