Semafor signals it’s innovating news form over function

The Americans are having another go at building a big global media voice — and remaking how “news” is presented — with the launch of Semafor out of New York. Its target market? Educated English-speakers worldwide who are frustrated with current news offerings. Sound like you?

Think of it as an attempt to do for 2020s web journalism what CNN did for broadcast 40 years ago. Its innovation schtick is to build trust with the “Semaform” which they say, involves “cracking open the black box” of the article to show its component parts, with crossheads, like The News, Reporter’s View, Room for Disagreement, The View From…, Notable, Now What.

Let’s see how that works.

The News

Semafor launched as a digital news source on October 18 with some of America’s biggest journalist names, kicking off with a staff of 60 and $A38.6 million in investor money. It’s got high ambitions to be the news source of choice for the world’s educated elite.

It’s been a high-profile rollout. You can’t read, watch or listen to much of the US media without stumbling across its backers talking it up. It’s been flagged (if you’ll pardon the pun) as the solution to what it claims are journalism’s big problems: political polarisation and bias. 

Notable

Its design signals a back-to-the-good-old days with a signature yellow background, seemingly a nod to America’s muck-raking “yellow” press, with text in newspaper-style serif type. Its title is a deliberate anachronism — much like those popular 19th century mastheads like Herald, Mercury or Chronicle. (It refers to point-to-point visual signalling, usually with flags.)

It nods to the internet is a more breezy, up-tempo writing style and (memo to editor) uses large type photo bylines to brand the writer.

While its article structure may be new, its definition of “news” feels old — both in the choice of subject and in its choices about what matters within the subject. Right now it’s focusing on the US midterm elections, with the same old tired horse-race lens. On Wednesday, for example, it highlighted the Pennsylvania Senate debate (just like all the other traditional media) with the identical worrying away at personalities over policies.

Room for disagreement

On the same day that Semafor launched, writer Rebecca Solnit tweeted (maybe sub-tweeted) that journalism needed to work out how to fit long arc stories (such as the climate crisis) into news: “The arc in which many significant events unfold is weeks to years to decades, but the news tends to obsess about the inception, then drop the story … Too often the real meaning of an event only comes slowly into focus, or the first take was wrong.”

There’s enough wrong with the news for both Semafor and Solnit to be right. But most media innovators — particularly outside the very inward-looking US market — are looking at content, not form.

For example, Argentina’s successful equivalent, Red/Accion, deliberately eschews the circus of day-to-day politics, shaping its news around six key content areas: the climate crisis, gender equality, social inclusion, health, education and technology.

View from… outside the Acela Corridor

At the concept launch in January, project founders ex-BuzzFeed news head, NYT media writer Ben Smith and Bloomberg’s Justin Smith said their target was global: the “English-speaking, college-educated, professional class of over 200 million people”.

Now their global footprint is more aspirational. Their major non-American hires are in Africa, such as Quartz Africa’s Yinka Adegoke, and that’s already producing some strong content — although if you want to follow an innovative take on Africa news sign up for The Continent’s WhatsApp feed.

Semafor’s opening story was Ben Smith’s “Inside the identity crisis at The New York Times”. It suggests the new voice sees itself as a player in the very New York conversation about news and media: how does a way of telling stories structured for middle-class white Americans adjust to a more diverse world? (To paraphrase ‘70s punk band The Tubes, think of it as White Dudes on Woke.)

It’s early days, but the content doesn’t scream global sensitivity. It feels written by and for a certain elite American audience in those urban megalopolises that stretch along the so-called Acela Corridor from Washington to Boston. 

Christopher’s view

The Semaform structure is an interesting evolution in news telling, rolling on from BuzzFeed’s major contribution to journalism, the listicle. It helps guide the writing. Whether it’s useful for the reader, who knows? 

The real problem? There’s just not that much of a gap in the market in same-same takes for First World heavy news consumers, particularly in east coast USA.