Media start-up companies in Canada, especially news providers, are looking at niche areas to stay relevant while avoiding competition with giants.
News outlets that are essentially start-ups specialise in niche sectors to bring in readers and viewers. Specialising in a niche area also helps retain consumers while avoiding competing directly with the media moguls.
According to a report in the Financial Post, five news start-ups have been selected for Ryerson’s DMZ incubator, with up to $100,000 in seed capital and $50,000 in Facebook advertising.
Examples of such start-ups include The Sprawl, a Calgary based news media pop up that focuses only on a few stories a year and thus provides in-depth coverage. The company is one of the five news start-ups selected to spend five months in the Ryerson Digital Media Zone (DMZ) incubator, with access to up to $100,000 in seed capital and $50,000 in Facebook advertising to help get their ideas off the ground.
None of the selected start-ups aims to take on the enormous legacy players in the news business. Instead, they each want to tackle a specific niche, in the shadow of the new media giants — Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon, the Financial Post Article said.
Representatives from each of the start-ups were at Facebook Canada’s office Monday for a panel discussion on the future of news, as part of Innovation Week, the article added.
Other news companies that are a part of this incubator include Ground, which uses citizen journalists to break news stories, and Trebble FM, which helps create an easy tool to let people build interactive newscasts for smart speakers such as Google Home the Amazon Echo.
Many of the consumers of these news media start-ups are those looking at specific information or area-specific news. People are now looking for customised news articles that suit their needs rather than just headlines that don’t add any value to their lives.
Similarly, The Gist is a newsletter that arrives every Monday and provides sports news for females. While the target audience is small now, it is a niche that can grow abundantly. With their fun-to-read newsletters, they are sure to become a hit among not just young sport-loving girls and women but soccer moms too.
All of these media companies use social media for bringing in readers. Social media is not just a marketing ploy for them but is why some of these companies even exist.
