Newser vs. Newspapers?
Newser Screenshot by Maria Khan
With the advent of Amazon Kindle, did writers stop writing or did publishers stop publishing? The answer is No. Will news aggregators, like Newser put newspapers out of business? Michael Wolff, founder of Newser thinks so, but I disagree.
Just like the Kindle aggregates e-books in one place, similarly Web sites, like Newser simply act as an umbrella branching out to Web sites that produce the news, like the New York Post.
Despite Wolff’s claims that aggregators will put newspapers, like the New York Times out of business, the reverse can very well be true, if the latter’s decision to charge frequent readers for content is a success. The Wall Street Journal and the The Financial Times are already doing so and if the pay for content movement is followed by other newspapers, online aggregators might fall short of their sources. In the last 72 hours alone, 9 out of 18 newspaper and magazine Web sites qualified as top sources on Newser.com.
The New York Times Screenshot by Maria Khan
Wolff also claims that we are fast approaching a world of bloggers, yet despite the success of blog style aggregators, like the Windy Citizen and Huffington Post, I disagree with Wolff yet again.
While blogs and social media sites might add flavor to a story; as in the case of the political upheaval in Iran, citizen journalists often do not have the access granted to a reporter representing a leading newspaper. Neither can they warrant the security granted to reporters, like Roxana Saberi, a freelance journalist for the BBC who was detained and later released in Iran.
Kirk McElhearn of Macworld.com sums it up on PCWorld,
“It can be said that “news” is worthless, that it is a commodity that can be provided by anyone…what news agencies can’t do is the added-value reporting, the analysis, opinion and in-depth reporting that we want to read to better understand, and that we need for society to thrive”.
I agree with Wolff that the niche style model is taking over the generic style of news reporting, but I do not believe that news aggregators can ever deliver newspaper style reporting, just like citizen journalists can never become professional journalists.
