Scott Karp is exactly right that every newspaper in American should have a headline aggregation system that brings the best of the whole web to an audience, not just the best that newspaper has done.
But he’s wrong that the only options right now are aggregators who link and newspapers who get links. His readers may be fighting that fight, but aggregators and newspapers are already there and moving.
On the newspaper side, we’re already seeing movement. We don’t have to “imagine if the NYTimes.com put above the fold on its homepage a continuously updated list of links ot breaking news around the web.” Or at least we won’t have to wait much longer. As reported in July, the Times is getting ready to launch Times Extra “which will be links to stories from NYT competitors, and will even occupy space on NYTimes.com homepage, a huge leap for the paper’s rather cloistered journalistic attitude of lore.” It’s only a toe in the water, but as PaidContent notes it’s a dramatic move if it continues. And as with many things, if The New York Times is going there, others are sure to follow.
On the aggregator side, Karp couldn’t be more wrong that “Drudge has NO COMPETITION!” Huffington Post is first a foremost an aggregator and is investing huge amounts of money in hiring up a reporting staff to reach the hybrid model he’s describing. At TPM, we launched an aggregating front page over a year ago that sends hundreds of thousands of pageviews a day to sites other than TPM. And we had a reporting staff before we launched the aggregator that’s only grown since.
The story to watch is not if, but how these hybrid models develop.
It’s time to start asking new questions: As aggregators report more news and newspapers do more aggregation, how does the market settle out? How do big news sites negotiate mass audiences and the need to compete witih niche aggregators? Will regional papers allow Huffington to get a foot in the door and start to develop an audiene or beat them there and prevent a challenge?
Karp is right that newspapers still need to be pushed. But my sense from things like Times Extra and the folks I talk to is that people are starting to catch on, and the real battle is about to be waged.