Influx

News magazines are having a difficult time trying to imagine a future beyond the printed page.

The Economist, is one news magazine,that despite bucking the trend with increases in circulation and ad pages, is still preparing itself for the future.

To do this, it created Project Red Stripe; basically a group of The Economist’s youngest and smartest minds from around the globe. They got together in a London office provided for them by their ad agency and for a few months considered hundreds of ideas for the future.

At the end of their journey, they settled on one.

Lughenjo

It’s big, powerful and imaginative.

Their idea is to link their intelligent, highly influential reader base to projects in the developing world.

As the team writes:

“Imagine a CEO examining a business plan for a developing world social enterprise. Or when one of the 450 000 finance and accounting professionals of CFO and Economist.com can look over the books of an NGO in Nairobi. The possibilities are endless. What’s more, by allowing skilled, smart, professionals to help development organisations, they will help solve development problems with market-based solutions.”

Of course, there are other people trying to do this all over the web, but the fact a paid-for big media entity like The Economist, is even prepared to think about this type of idea is interesting.

Everyone in media might be talking about community and user-generated content, this idea takes all of that a stage further by trying to do something good for those who lack resources.

The Economist has a global circulation of around 1 million, so the impact could be considerable.

The initiative still has to be approved by senior management.

It would be nice to see other media companies think this big.

Content→Community→Action
 

Posted by Ed Cotton