Not a feed.A paper.

One edition a morning. A few pages. Then it ends.

Front page of the prototype: a blackletter masthead, the date, and a lead story set in two columns.
The prototype, which you have seen. It builds itself overnight on a Raspberry Pi and is on the reMarkable at six. Five pages.

Take that, give it to people who are not us, and the obvious thing happens: it turns into a feed. More items, more often, tuned to keep you there. Every product that started as a newspaper ended up there.

So the product is not the pipeline. The product is six rules that stop it becoming a feed.

The rules

  1. The edition ends.

    Fixed pages, one delivery a morning. No scroll, no “load more”, nothing after six.

  2. Page one is shared.

    Everyone gets the same front page. Personal starts on page two.

  3. Every item links out.

    Three sentences and the writer’s link. Never the whole piece.

  4. One item you did not ask for.

    In every edition, and labelled as such.

  5. You own your brief.

    The paragraph that describes you is visible, editable, deletable. No hidden weights.

  6. Paper is a real output.

    E-ink, Kindle, print. Typeset properly, not an afterthought.

Ruled out: ads, infinite editions, engagement metrics, chat with your paper.

The objection

A shared front page kills the personalisation. That was the point.

Everything after page one is yours. A paper that is entirely yours is a filter bubble with better fonts.

What do you think?