New Netscape.com focuses on news

Netscape is expected to relaunch its Web site on Thursday, transforming from a general purpose portal into a news site in which both readers and editors choose the content.

In its latest incarnation, Netscape is a hybrid news site combining elements of social bookmarking, like Yahoo's Delicious, Digg and Slashdot, where users recommend and rank their top choices for news stories, and traditional news sites, where editors select their top picks.

Netscape also is borrowing from blogs by having paid editors--dubbed "anchors" in a nod to broadcast journalism--comment on stories. The site is even taking it a step further by having its editors fact check news stories and do some additional reporting to provide background or further context, said Jason Calacanis, who co-founded blog publisher Weblogs Inc., which AOL bought last year.

"This is a new type of journalism," Calacanis said in a recent interview with CNET News.com. "I think it's a risk-taking, bold step by AOL."

Calacanis knew he wanted to do a news site that featured reader participation, but said he got the idea to have some editorial oversight when he read complaints about lack of transparency at Digg. A reader suspected Digg editors of gaming the site by pushing stories up without merit, or allowing readers to. Digg denied the accusation.

"I had an 'aha' moment," Calacanis said. "I was watching the controversy about Digg and I thought I would just put an editor on top of it to check the facts."

It's a smart way to differentiate themselves from Yahoo News and Google News and the CNBCs and big portal sites.

--Bryan Keefer, assistant managing editor, CJR Daily

Readers will be able to track other reader activity, to see who submitted items and what they voted and commented on, he said.

Netscape is employing eight full-time anchors and 15 part-time specialists who will be giving "special treatments" to a couple of stories each day, he said.

For example, the anchor for the food and travel channel called a chef to get his response to a negative restaurant review. Another anchor called a New York Times columnist to ask about her motivation for writing a mean-spirited column about a celebrity.

"It will ruffle a few feathers" among journalists, Calacanis predicted.

Anchors will also appear on live video and have chats with readers about stories, he said. Users can also upload video.

"It's a smart way to differentiate themselves from Yahoo News and Google News and the CNBCs and big portal sites," said Bryan Keefer, assistant managing editor of CJR Daily of the Columbia Journalism Review. CJR Daily also has editors who scrutinize the media.

Before the relaunch, Netscape.com was a lackluster news repository, heavy with bullet points and headlines for items with titles like "Drunk Dictionary: Translate the Slurs" and "The Right Way to Touch Your Date."

The new Netscape features a group of main stories recommended by editors and a long list of reader picks listing the number of votes from readers, related images and links to comments, for 30 different topic channels. It also has profiles of anchors and frequent reader contributors, as well as lists of popular tags and channels.

[nealsaferstein]

Amazing

Its amazing how things change. This was once the most popular site on the internet.

Neal Saferstein

[DaClyde]

And for a completely different reason

When it was a top site on the net, 90% of that traffic was just browser downloads.

[thedreaming]

It was ...

Microsoft and AOL killed netscape. Not sure why they are even online anymore. Does anyone use their browser? Doesn't everyone just use Firefox and Internet Explorer?

[Maccess]

Marc Andreesen said this years ago.

Marc Andreesen noted in 1998 when Netscape was pummelled by Microsoft that they failed to capitalize on the fact that netscape.com was the most visited homepage in the world, simply because it was the default page of the then-most popular browser.