Kluster to launch crowdsourced newspaper and newsroom

This article was migrated from an old version of our website in 2025. As a result, it might have some low-quality images or non-functioning links - if there's any issues you'd like to see fixed, get in touch with us at info@journalism.co.uk.

Web application design firm Kluster is launching an daily online community newspaper, where readers decide what content gets published and take a share of the advertising revenue.

The website, The Knewsroom , will publish content sourced from its readership - a mixture of original content and links to external content on topics requested by users.

Access to newsroom area will allow users to see the content being produced for the next day's edition and make suggestions for future publications.

Articles contributed to the site will compete for space in the paper with stories nominated from other sites by readers who can select a single submission each day from the topic area.

To back a submission users will invest 'watts' - the site's online currency - in individual pieces of content.

Users who invest in content that makes it onto the site will then receive a share the advertising revenue.

"People invest their watts into a story and that determines what stake in that story you have. If it took 1,000 watts for a story to win and get published and you were responsible for investing 100 watts in it, you were ten per cent influential, so you're going to get ten per cent the ad revenue generated by that story," Ben Kaufman, founder of Kluster, told Journalism.co.uk.

Kaufman said the decision to publish once a day was taken to combine the best parts of a traditional newspapers 'the most important stories, well written and concise' with reader participation.

"We want to deliver a small amount of content to everyone every day that has already been validated by the community," he said.

The site, will launch next week.