Reading the News Through Its Sub-atomic Particles ...

Reading the News Through Its Sub-atomic Particles

Or more simply, in bite sized nuggets. Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network and his partner, Matt Galligan have just released Circa, a news app that has re-imagined news production around mobile news reading habits.

GigaOM explains:

So part of Circa’s mission, Galligan says, was to rethink not just the way that traditional news is delivered for mobile or digital audiences, but to rethink the way that news is produced as well — and that meant trying to boil down the idea of a news story into its component pieces. So Circa doesn’t show you an entire news article, the way a mobile news app from theNew York Timesor some other traditional outlet would: instead, it breaks the news down into its “atomic units,” which consist of a series of news facts, background information and other elements (photos, quotes, etc.) A user can then choose how many of those atomic units to read at a given time.

So in looking at a news event like the vice-presidential debate, for example, Circa began with a short paragraph about the stakes for the respective candidates, with much of the emphasis on the Obama campaign to make up for the allegedly lacklustre performance of the president in the previous presidential debate. If that’s all you wanted to know, the brief would be enough — but scrolling down in the app produces other points, each of which is a short paragraph or two that adds more in the way of background to the story, a quote to highlight the issues, and so on. The points are written by Circa’s editors, and the sources for each are included at the end of each item.

Video: Watch the introduction to Circa here.

Image: via Cir.ca