Periscope Post sets sights on HuffPo's success

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A new online news website aiming to be the British answer to the Huffington Post has launched after more than a year of development. The Periscope Post will add context and comment to news stories from international news outlets, bloggers and other sources, according to a release from the site, which came out of beta last week. The site will link back to and accredit articles, but will not aggregate news headlines to the same extent as the Huffington Post website.

Regular features will include a daily snapshot of editorials from financial news sources in 'The Financial Pages' and a round-up of the best columnists and opinion writers in 'The Opinion Pages'. The site also has a section dedicated to readers' views, who in addition to being able to comment on individual articles are asked to submit their own opinion pieces.

The site was founded by Thomas Gommes, a graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism and Columbia Law School, who decided to leave his job as a corporate lawyer to launch the site and publishing company Periscope Post Ltd, which was set up in January 2009.

"The site is currently self-funded although some angel and VC investors have expressed tentative interest in getting involved. Whether or not we look to outside funding will depend on how quickly we can ramp up advertising revenues, but for now our focus is on providing the best possible content to the greatest number of people," he told Journalism.co.uk.

Experienced freelance journalist Linda Rodriquez-McRobbie, who has written for outlets including CNN Money and the Christian Science Monitor, is editor-in-chief of the site. The site's editorial team is based in London, but its news coverage will have an international focus.

The staff is a mixture of full-time journalists, freelancers, part-time journalists, editorial advisors and journalism graduate student interns, with between six and 10 people working at most times, said Gommes.

"I'm not too concerned about launching in this challenging environment, because I truly believe we've created a great news product that saves people time and is a pleasure to read. Before Periscope, that was sorely lacking from the online news market, especially in Europe," he said.

"Our size, start-up status, and independence does allow us to adapt much quicker to the changing news media environment than can some of the bigger organisations. These are exciting times for journalism and I think all of us involved in news today should view the changes going on in the industry as an opportunity to be a part of a new, media landscape. In terms of launching in economically difficult times, well, I take comfort in the knowledge that Henry Luce started Time magazine during an equally challenging environment, with a similar news offering of short but comprehensive news round-ups, and as we all know, he didn't do too badly."