Newspapers need to work with aggregators

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Posted by Mathew @ 11:09 pm on June 18 2007 | |

Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 has a great post about how newspapers can work with aggregators and the distributed ecosystem of the Web, instead of just moaning about how Google and Yahoo are stealing their business, as Tribune owner Sam Zell and others like to do from time to time. Scott nails it when he says that:

The problem that newspapers and other traditional media brands have is that they still see branding as a function of controlling the distribution channel, rather than branding each unit of content that must now live and survive on its own in a disaggregated online media ecosystem.

Using aggregators and search wisely can make a big difference, Scott points out, using the New York Times “Topics” pages as an example. Putting together pages of content that match what people are searching for is a good way of making the rest of your publishing entity that much more appealing. And Scott notes that this works for his site as well.

Publishing 2.0 gets 73% of its traffic from search and referring sites, which include aggregators like Techmeme. Some of my content is also syndicated in full text on Seeking Alpha, Yahoo, and Digital Media Wire (with links back to the site, which yield significant traffic) — this is anathema to the traditional media mindset.

But the result, he says, is that his RSS and email subscriptions keep growing, and so is his brand — by effectively leveraging search, and by giving his content away.

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Mathew posted this article under Media, Social networks, Web2.0 on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 11:09 pm. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, and you can also view Technorati Linkbacks or check for other responses using YackTrack.

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Mat 1 year ago 1 point
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Yes, but I just don't see this scaling across all professional content producers.

While this strategy can work for a select few (yourself, Scott, a handful of others) I'm not sure this is a viable strategy for budding professional journalists entering the market.

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Mathew 1 year ago 1 point
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Thanks for the comment, Mat -- but I wasn't so much talking about using that type of strategy for individuals (although I think it can work for some, as you point out). I think the point was that newspapers as a whole should be doing this.

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Mat 1 year ago 1 point
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Do you think that newspapers, or more broadly, large new organizations will continue to flourish? What will happen to individual, professional media creators in a future where large media orgs wield far less power, influence (and ability to pay)? That's what I'm grappling with. I've not seen a model that deals with the future reality of professional journalism yet. It's almost an emperor-has-no-clothes situation... we all see it coming, but no one knows what to do about it....

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