MSNBC anchor Carlos Watson noticed during the presidential campaigns and election of President Obama last year that a new generation of media consumers had emerged. The “Change Generation,” Watson calls it (wonder where he got that name from), is educated, edgy and curious about the world and news, and in contrast to the yuppies from 20 years ago, doesn’t find news solely in the New York Times or on CNN. This generation cares about pop culture, social activism, fresh opinions and of course, change. So Watson has created a news and opinion site, called The Stimulist, which launched last week, that caters to the this generation, and found a high-profile lead investor to boot, Elevation Partner’s Roger McNamee. Yup, the same McNamee who recently stepped down from Forbes Media’s board.
The Stimulist breaks slightly from the format of most news sites and blogs by limiting its content to only six features per day. Taking inspiration from the news briefing that President Obama gets each morning from his staff, Watson’s site features “The Daily Six: Six Things You Should Know Today.”
These include: News We Like, a roundup of hot topics in the news; Kind of a Big Deal, a daily profile of a rising star (for instance, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was profiled); Idea To Consider; a thought-provoking piece intended to start conversations (Yesterday’s was “Resolved: Marijuana Will Be Legalized”); Good Sh*t, a recommendation of a fresh, “cool” place to go or something to do; Flashback, a historical anecdote that will shine extra light on a current event (“The Five Most Shocking Justice Appointments” was featured earlier this week); and The C Note, Watson’s place to share his original opinions and thoughts.
Watson says all content is original but the stories link to other news sources. He maintains that though there are a limited amount of daily articles on the site, the Stimulist will be alluring to readers because it is simple, easy to read and people won’t get lost on the site. The Stimulist is being positioned as an ideal read for a coffee or lunch break from work. A tremendous amount of thought went into the design and aesthetics of the site, Watson says, with the idea that the “change” generation would appreciate a streamlined site that isn’t overwhelming.
The Stimulist’s competitors are the Huffington Post and Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast, which is a daily mashup of cultural and general news. Both, however, are aggregators of news from elsewhere and thus have much more daily content than The Stimulist. But Watson says sometimes less is more. The site itself is lean, but the startup already has six staff members (which seems like a lot to produce only six posts a day).
Watson is careful to make the distinction that this site is geared towards the change generation, which he estimates in the twenty-something to forty-something age demographic. But last week, an 80-year-old gentlemen wrote Watson, saying that he’s as much a part of this generation as a 25-year-old. So maybe it is more of a state of mind. But do you have to be an Obama supporter to qualify?
Although Watson hopes to become the “first and favorite” source of news for this generation (regardless of age), I think that The Stimulist is more similar to a daily digital magazine catered to a web audience with short-attention spans. It’s a great place for readers to stop off and take a quick read of current perspectives and leave feeling a little bit more educated for the day. But can it become a daily habit for enough readers to make it last? The rule of thumb in online news is that traffic rises with the number of stories posted per day because not everyone is interested in each story. The more stories there are to choose from, the more readers who show up. Watson thinks he can buck this trend.
with the daily rush of information at my brain, i think he’s got a pretty neat idea. i’ve always been a fan of quality vs. quantity.
If they don’t have pictures of college girls then I’m not interested
So it’s basically a left wing news blog that caters to people who believe the bail-outs (i.e. stimulist) are an excellent idea?
And ‘change’. Not improvement, just change. Changing positions, changing goals, anything that changes, we celebrate it here at Stimulist.
http://www.yout...h?v=rX7wtNOkuHo
does this mean that the news will simply be moved to a highly visible uses and from uses that will be ignored and downplayed
or will news just be printed out of thin air and crowd out all of the other news?
or perhaps news will be borrowed from abroad until there is no more foreign news to borrow and news consumption in the US will screech to a halt
>> So it’s basically a left wing news blog that caters to people who believe the bail-outs (i.e. stimulist) are an excellent idea?
Another way to word that is that it is a propaganda machine run by and for economic ignoramuses with anti-social personality disorders.
They better hope they can make a living of trading carbon credits, because with that much economic sense, they aren’t going to be in business very long.
Don’t worry. They’ll get a bailout. After all, the government needs the constant mental illness to continue to support their existence and in order to get that, they need astroturfing institutions like this to continue pumping out government lies.
Woohoo! Bail-outs for everyone!
i like the site and what carlos is doing with it. i agree, less is more. I like HuffPo but their website is too much. If anything i prefer their mobile version. is simpler.
I also like that Stimulist has original articles. So much just get recirculated its nice when someone does something orginial.
keep it up carlos! good work so far.
As a designer I found this very curious…
“A tremendous amount of thought went into the design and aesthetics of the site, Watson says, with the idea that the “change” generation would appreciate a streamlined site that isn’t overwhelming.”
Looks a lot like the Monocrhome theme to me (http://graphpap...heme=Monochrome).
Maybe all that thought went towards choosing the right theme.
Big thanks for the write-up, Leena! We’re hoping to get that post:staffer ratio up to at least 1.5:1 pretty soon here…
Are you kidding? This deserved coverage. Headed to the site – mindnumbing where to buy furniture crap.
yeah, but don’t u wanna rush out and buy more stuff made in other countries in the vain notion that it somehow gives the guy across the street a job?
or have u woken up to the fact that the common good has nothing to do with how much crap you have?
Really feeling like the name could use some freshening up.. I mean the economist and the consumerist both post hundreds of millions of hits and they already annoy the heck out of me because I type the wrong one from time to time..
It’s like if I started techBrunch.com as a blog to capitalize on Arrington’s 6 stages of bowel movements. (no offense MA)
The site is not left-wing propaganda and it’s certainly not just fluff. I really enjod reading it each morning as a great complement the more traditional news I get from the NY Times. There have been great articles on The Stimulist that I can’t read anywhere else, such as one on the five most surprising surpreme courts nomine (one of whom, i learned, was a member of the KKK: http://thestimu...-in-us-history/ .
Well, if Star says it’s not a left-wing site then she must be correct. Forget that she gets her news from the Times and makes a KKK reference. The only thing left is to reference Hitler and this is a done deal.
Interesting idea and very impressed by the design. Name sounds a mashup of *Stimul*us and Econom*ist*.