Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab, produces a very interesting take on the future of the newspaper. Indeed, he thinks it ought to be the present, not the future.
He calls it the "nichepaper." The newspaper, he says, isn't fit for the 21st century. The nichepaper focuses on a particular vein and explores it in depth.
The nichepaper comprises several principal attributes:
1. Knowledge, not news.
2. Commentage (curation of comments), not commentary.
3. Topics, not articles.
4. Scarcity, not circulation.
5. Now, not then.
6. Provocation, not perfection.
7. Snowballs (meaning criticism), not sell-outs (meaning clubbiness).
8. Tasks, not tech (meaning platform- and tech-agnostic).