With Aggregation Becoming Big Business, Some Publishers Are Playing Along…For Now

May 13, 2013 by
Flipboard has become hugely popular by focusing on a smart, simple reading experience, letting the users decide what content to fill it with. (Credit: Shardayyy/Flickr/Creative Commons License)

Flipboard has become hugely popular by focusing on a smart, simple reading experience, letting the users decide what content to fill it with. (Credit: Shardayyy/Flickr/Creative Commons License)

Tech startups big and small are fighting for dominance in a new market offering personalized, curated or DIY magazines that aggregate what can be an overwhelming roar of online news content into something more manageable and meaningful. Judging from the popularity of apps like Flipboard, they have a captive audience. [Read more…]

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Journalism’s problem of scale demands a rethinking of the news product

December 24, 2012 by

The newsroom at The Daily Telegraph

The newsroom at The Daily Telegraph. | Credit: victoriapeckham/Flickr


I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to untangle the mass of conflicting visions about the future of the news industry. But recently I heard a phrase of unusual clarity: “Traditional journalism, as a process, does not scale.”

The person who spoke this line was Matt Berger, the director of digital media at Marketplace. What he meant was there is no business model that will support an organization with 100 reporters writing 100 stories (or, as we used to refer to the newsroom, 100 monkeys at 100 typewriters). [Read more…]

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