Circa - learning from the experiment

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David Caswell

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Jun 24, 2015, 10:10:39 PM6/24/15
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Sadly Circa is no more, but as an early experiment in structuring journalism it was very influential and broke much new ground.


As the many post mortems are published over the next few weeks I’m going to try to post links here. Hopefully the nascent structured journalism community can extract every tiny little bit of understanding available from Circa’s experience and apply that in future projects. Please add any interesting analysis you find, and any comments you have. Thank you Circa for the valiant effort.



Dave Cohn's Quick Thoughts (6/24/15): http://blog.digidave.org/2015/06/quick-thoughts-as-circa-shuts-down


Mathew Ingram’s  overview (6/24/15): http://fortune.com/2015/06/24/circa-is-dead/


Matthew Terenzio

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Jun 24, 2015, 11:03:24 PM6/24/15
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Facebook wasn't the first of its kind. I think we'll see more iterations of this approach.

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David Caswell

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Jun 25, 2015, 8:41:54 AM6/25/15
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Matthew Terenzio

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Jun 25, 2015, 9:01:01 AM6/25/15
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Thanks and farewell from Anthony De Rosa

http://www.antderosa.com/2015/06/24/team-circa-editorial/

On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 8:41 AM, David Caswell <da...@structuredstories.com> wrote:

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David Caswell

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Jun 25, 2015, 11:53:31 AM6/25/15
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Casey Newton from The Verge: Why Circa Failed   http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/24/8842009/why-circa-failed

This is well worth reading. It's thoughtful, direct and quite critical of many aspects of structured journalism. 

David Caswell

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Jun 25, 2015, 8:17:38 PM6/25/15
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David Caswell

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Jun 26, 2015, 11:56:43 AM6/26/15
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Mark Coddington at Nieman Labs: http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/06/one-thing-we-can-learn-from-circa-a-broader-way-to-think-about-structured-news/

Very thoughtful and full of deep, original insight..

David Caswell

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Jun 28, 2015, 5:47:18 PM6/28/15
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David Caswell

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Jun 30, 2015, 9:59:39 PM6/30/15
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Madeline Bilis, of the San Francisco Business Times:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2015/06/circa-shutdown-news-apps-vc-startups-smartnews.html

Good overview & comparison with SmartNews

David Caswell

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Jun 30, 2015, 10:04:54 PM6/30/15
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David Caswell

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Jul 2, 2015, 12:33:38 PM7/2/15
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Jason Calacanis, a Circa investor, on Medium: https://medium.com/@jason/circa-s-biggest-crime-was-a4b6c60d5f9c

"Circa failed because it was so efficient, so obsessed with the truth, that it was boring"

David Caswell

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Jul 2, 2015, 2:33:03 PM7/2/15
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Anthony De Rosa's post 'Dear Circa': http://www.antderosa.com/2015/06/28/dear-circa/

Letters from fans 

David Caswell

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Jul 13, 2015, 8:54:18 PM7/13/15
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Peter Houston, from the Media Briefing: Could Circa find a future as a B2B news app?


http://www.themediabriefing.com/article/could-circa-find-a-future-as-a-b2b-news-app


David Caswell

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Aug 6, 2015, 12:22:43 PM8/6/15
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More from David Cohn on Circa and structured journalism generally... 

What is possible with "Structured Journalism"? A response to critiques of Circa.


Reg Chua

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Aug 6, 2015, 1:00:52 PM8/6/15
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It's a very good piece, and I'll aim to comment on it.  Plus, here's a broader piece on Circa I wrote the other day:



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Matthew Terenzio

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Aug 6, 2015, 3:32:03 PM8/6/15
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Reg, I thinks that's a great point about finding unoccupied fields. In fact, we don't even need traditional journalists covering the same thing unless they are giving some unique perspective or fact. It's not lack of voice so much as as lack of adding new value.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/structured-journalism/CAEKnom8CjaCQXQWs8C3WOgZeCf%3D27Pdqp64maJVz8U3VwNB%2BMA%40mail.gmail.com.

David Caswell

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Aug 17, 2015, 6:33:33 PM8/17/15
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Another blog post on Circa, mostly from a business POV and following the 'structured but dull' meme...

David Caswell

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Oct 22, 2015, 2:50:24 PM10/22/15
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An old thread on Y-Combinator's Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9775213


David Caswell

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Dec 7, 2015, 1:05:40 PM12/7/15
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David Smydra

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Dec 7, 2015, 1:40:46 PM12/7/15
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Whoa. Interesting on many levels.

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