the rwanda daily newspaper
Paper.li does one thing simply. It creates a “daily paper” by aggregating tweets around a topic tag or from the people you follow or from a Twitter list.
The Rwanda Daily is created from #rwanda links shared on Twitter. It’s not vetted, verified or edited in any way. It’s major faults are it relies solely on a) people sharing good, timely, newsworthy stuff and b) people not tagging any old shit for the (admittedly huge…) opportunity to appear in the Rwanda Daily.
I’ve stopped exploring papers created from followers and lists - they lack focus. As far as papers created from tags are concerned, they’re better but are still too easy to “game”. Six improvements are needed as far as I see it,
- Allow paper.li publishers to add a human editorial layer before publication
- Allow publishers to use stylised themes/logos for papers
- Incorporate custom urls i.e. kigaliwire.com/thedaily
- Alternative delivery formats, full paper as email, rss, pdf, mobile friendly
- Ability to editorialise the tweet alert that is generated
- Some statistics on how many subscribers and clickers the paper has.
Paper.li is a fabulous proposition, especially for people who have no interest in social networks like Twitter, but who need information.
I’ve already had very positive feedback from those who’ve looked over the Rwanda Daily.
Thank you for all you efforts to create Kigali wire news and now this new initiative. For me it’s an easy way to keep up without having to Google all day. Iris in Holland
However, without the changes mentioned above, especially the editorial layer, it’s going to remain little more than a gimmick.
