What creates the greatest value for users? Professional editors’ careful selection of content from one source or sophisticated aggregation services picking relevant content from numerous sources?
It may sound like a rethoric question, but it is not. Rather the question goes to the core of the discussion of what provides unique value to users when it comes to news content, exemplified by the very different paths taken by the UK media houses The Times and The Guardian.
There are two trends worth noticing:
Trend 1: News are being disaggregated. In the old world news was always a part of an editorial package, be it in the newspaper, a radio show or a TV program. But in the digital world the content has been split up into its individual units. Just like music now is sold by the individual tunes, and not necessarily by the record itself, news do not depend on editorial packages to be distributed to readers. Each news story has value in itself.
Trend 2: News are also being reaggregated. After having been split up, news are being repackaged and consumed in different ways. This happens by social sharing, automatic aggregation and search services picking up content from numerous sources and presenting them according to topical or other interests.
Where do these trends leave the media companies?
There seems to be two very distinct perspectives on this question. Which you believe in has a strong bearing on how you think about the value of content.
Let us examine the two different perspectives on content:
Perspective 1: The core value proposition of a media company is to offer a carefully selected and edited package of quality content
Many media managers emphasize how news companies have always offered an edited package. One of the most important qualities of a newspaper, for instance, is the physical limitations of the product and how content has been nicely laid out within those limits to provide a unique experience to the reader.
In the newspaper world publishers controlled distribution completely, in fact much of the media power was based on a something near a monopoly position. Readers would have no other place to go for the content than to select the edited package of the newspaper.
All this has changed radically in the digital world of course as content has become abundant.
Yet most media managers still argue that the quality of editorial selection is one of the most important elements differentiating media companies from any other content provider. And there is much truth to that, as media brands have been developed on this value proposition for decades.
Many media managers, like Rupert Murdoch, take the argument even one step further: They try to stop aggregators, like Google News, from using their content, arguing that the media company itself should control all use of its content.
There has been a number of industry initiatives inspired by this line of thought, including the attempt to establish the ACAP protocol as a standard for administering copyright standards.
Professor Eric Clemmons at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania illustrates this way of thinking in his article “We need to change copyright laws to save newspapers”. He argues that copyright laws should be changed so that no part of newspaper articles, not even the lead paragraph, should be picked up by aggregators for the first 24 hours after publication.
From this perspective all aggregator services are perceived as competitors to the news media. Media companies argue that Google News and other aggregators should in fact pay a fee to the news media for the right to aggregate headlines and lead paragraphs.
The main goal is to make media sites the sole portals for their own content, increasing traffic and opportunities for monetizing the users.
For a very strong critique of this perspective I suggest you read the Danish blogger Thomas Baekdal’s article “We Can Save Newspapers by Destroying the Web”.
Perspective 2: The core value of media companies is as a source of quality content. Stories should be shared wherever readers want them to go.
Users no longer need to go each individual media site to check for interesting content. Instead there are numerous increasingly sophisticated services around that will automatically aggregate and select content for you, often based on your personal preferences or suggestions from your friens.
A recent study from the UK showed how social networking sites now compete with news publishers as sources of breaking news and information.
Let me use myself as example: I am a dedicated user of Google Reader – and currently have about 100 RSS feeds included. Most of them are content sources specializing in topics of particular interest to me. There is no way I would have visited all these sites on a regular basis; at the most I would have dropped by 4 or 5 of them. Aggregation makes it possible to follow new content from multiple number of sources.
The same with Twitter. I use it mostly professionally, sharing interesting links about digital media trends (you can follow me at twitter.com/johnei) Through Twitter I also pick up lots of interesting articles. Only very few of them would I even know was written were it not for other professionals in my fields sharing them on Twitter.
Recently I have started using another sophisticated aggregation service called Flipboard, which has been described as a “social magazine” built for iPad.
Are all these services thieves stealing content from media companies? Not according to those who believe in sharing and the value of links. Rather they would argue that these services indeed offer real value to users, by sifting through enormous amount of content and presenting it in a relevant context in a way no human editor would be capable of. No media company would be even near to offer this value to their readers.
Also, followers of this perspective would argue, these services bring million of visitors to media sites that would otherwise not be there. In an English language market it is not uncommon that more than half of the visitors to a news site do not go through the front page at all, but rather arrives directly at an individual article. Even in a small language market like Norway almost a third of the weekly visitors to major news sites do not drop by the front page.
Because of this, the thinking goes, the real value of media sites is as a source of quality content. That is where the media site should put its effort. The Guardian is an example of a media company following this path – trying to spread its content wherever interested readers may be.
Back to the question: What creates the greatest value for users?
That depends, of course – both on the brand, the user and the user situation. I strongly believe that editorial packaging still has value, especially when brands are strong. And many readers visit their favorite news site on a daily basis because they appreciate how stories are being selected and put together. But this can no longer be the only way publishers offer their content to readers. The reason is simple: Sophisticated aggregation offers as high value to many readers in many situations.
Aggregation and social media sharing thus should not be perceived as enemies of the media, but rather as opportunities to distribute the content further. Yes, some aggregation services make money without producing any content at all. But they also add value to the content by offering users better ways to find and consume it.
How this will play out in the long term, is difficult to say. As aggregation services and semantics technology improve, there is a fair chance that the front pages of the media sites will be less important to many users, at least in bigger markets. This development is being accelerated by people’s dependence on friends’ recommendations in social networks in finding news and interesting content.
I believe successful media companies will both have strong enough brands to attract readers to their edited packages as well as an attitude of openness towards aggregation, linking and sharing.
What do you think?
You may also want to read:
- From Distribution To The Link Economy (baekdal.com)
- How Metadata Can Eliminate the Need for Paywalls (Mediashift)
- How News Consumption is Shifting to the Personalized Social News Stream (mashable.com)
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