手机新闻阅读有望迎来新时代

    在小型移动设备上用新闻阅读软件看新闻报道可能并不是那么方便。比如，一篇500字的有关伯克希尔•哈撒韦公司（Berkshire Hathaway）耗资230亿美元收购亨氏食品公司（Heinz）的新闻报道，如果用电脑看起来的话毫无压力。但若是要在更小的移动设备上阅读的话，就少不了要进行多次的下拉与点击的动作才能看完，可以说相当麻烦。“如今，所有的新闻报道都只适用于纸媒、网络和平板电脑，”初创公司Circa首席执行官马特•加利根解释说。他认为，几乎没有什么适合专门在智能手机上阅读的内容和信息。

    2011年，加利根与阿塞尼奥•桑托斯以及米姆文化网站Cheezburger Network的首席执行官本•哈尔共同创办了Circa（公司的全名是Circa1605，而1605年正是世界上第一份报纸诞生的那一年）。Flipboard和Pulse这样新闻阅读应用程序只是作为载体，将现有的新闻报道加以精简，同时改换排版方式，使它适合用手机屏幕阅读，而Circa的方式却更加的费时费力。这家初创公司组建了一个编辑团队，成员遍布于美国、英国和中国。这些编辑们通过若干个不同的信息来源收集当天的热点新闻，然后从中筛选出比较重要的内容进行加工改写，并以一张张“新闻卡片”的形式呈现出来，而每张“新闻卡片”上只有两到三句话。

    Circa将新闻报道的信息拆分成若干个既赏心悦目、又易于阅读的卡片，但同时还能保持原新闻信息的完整性。“马特深知出色设计的重要价值，”Circa公司的投资人大卫•科恩说，他也是位于科罗拉多州博尔德市的投资公司TechStars的首席执行官。Circa带给用户的阅读体验令大多数传统媒体移动阅读应用相形见绌。Circa的编辑团队每天都会摘取25条以上有关政治、国际时讯以及科技等方面的新闻。用户平均只需10分钟时间，就可以浏览完毕当天的热点新闻。加利根认为Circa的“新闻卡片”模式效果明显，因为人们每天只会在空闲的时间内用手机浏览新闻。

    这款应用程序的开发者认为，Circa有潜力改变未来读者阅读新闻的方式。他们认为，如今，传统的新闻报道都受制于“真实性”的要求，因此记者在写作时往往都会先写有关该新闻事件的最新情况，接着又会把此前的报道作为背景再重述一遍。2011年，哈尔曾在一篇个人博客中抱怨说：“新闻报道后半部分内容都是之前已经报道过的东西，我都读过不下9遍了。”更糟糕的是，由于纸媒（也包括大部分网络媒体）的天然属性，新闻报道往往无法做到及时更新。

    相反，Circa应用上的新闻却可以随着事件的进展实时更新。用户可以通过设置“书签”来跟踪一个新闻，当被跟踪的新闻有新进展时，用户就会收到推送通知。比如，教皇本笃十六世宣布退位的消息可能仅是一系列新闻的开始，人们还会想知道他的继位者是谁，其他的继位者是否有机会等等，接下来，罗马教廷还会发布正式的消息。Circa应用能够通过不断更新而将此后一系列相关进展整合成一篇实时的连续报道，而不是像纸媒那样只能发表一篇篇分散的报道。“我们面临的真正挑战是，一旦某个新闻事件出现最新进展时，我们能否在第一时间掌握消息，”Circa公司首任新闻编辑大卫•科恩说。

    Pint-sized mobile device have created a problem for news readers: a 500-word item about Berkshire Hathaway's (BRKA) $23 billion acquisition of Heinz may be easy-to-read on a desktop but require many awkward swipes and taps to get through on a smaller screen. "All content today is produced with the intention of being read in print, on the Web or on a tablet," explains Matt Galligan, CEO of the startup Circa. Few bits of content, he argues, are created to be consumed via smartphone.

    Enter Circa, a startup founded in 2011 by Galligan, Arsenio Santos, and Ben Huh, CEO of meme-purveyor Cheezburger Network. (The company's full name -- Circa 1605 -- refers to the year the first newspaper was printed.) Other news-reading apps like Flipboard and Pulse approach retrofitting the news for mobile devices by taking existing stories and tinkering with their layout. Circa's tack is more laborious: The startup employs an editorial team spread across the U.S., U.K., and China that trawl the day's news from different sources, select what they think are the most important, then rewrite those articles into photo-friendly "slides" with two or three sentences each.

    Strung together, Circa's slides form a story that's easy on the eyes and quick to consume while keeping the salient details intact. "Matt understands the value of beautiful design," says David Cohen, a Circa investor and CEO of Boulder, Colo.-based investment firm TechStars. It shows in the Circa reading experience, which puts to shame the majority of traditional media outlets' mobile readers. On any given day, Circa's editorial team will pump out over 25 stories in areas like politics, world news, and technology. Users spend 10 minutes, on average, skimming them each day. Galligan believes Circa's format works because people tend to use their phones most during short bursts of idle time throughout the day.

    The app's creators argue that it has the potential to improve the ways readers consume news in the future. They say some news items suffer from a tried-and-true formula of quick writing that puts fresh news about an event up top but repurposes older information afterwards. "The rest of the article is just a regurgitation of the previous 24-hours worth of stories that I've already [seen] 9 times before," Huh complained in a personal blog post back in 2011. Even worse, thanks to the permanent nature of print -- and even much Web journalism -- stories aren't often updated.

    In contrast, Circa stories are refreshed as news develops. Readers can "bookmark" a story to follow it, so they'll be notified when it is updated. For instance, Pope Benedict XVI's resignation will likely be just the first in a chain of news reports. There will be speculation about who his successor will be and odds placed on different candidates. Then, of course, the Vatican will make its decision official. Instead of a series of separate stories, Circa may handle all of that as one overarching piece that is updated over time. "The real challenge on our end is we have to recognize when a story will evolve," explains David Cohn, Circa's founding news editor.