That is what these sites are. They are about taking independently produced news (which eventually all news/opinion should be) and creating targeted publications.

Considering this, I think its the repackaging of the news that is being done in a new way, than creation of the content itself. Its really the repackaging where innovation is being done and will continue. This, by no means, devalues the value content itself, but its the repackging applications which are really bringing in the NEW - the 2.0. no?

Sure, it would be nice to have a different, distinctive descriptor for the new round of news aggregators. However, like the Web 2.0 meme itself, I think it’s going to be far easier for non-industry types to comprehend a phrase like News 2.0 than anything else that people could come up with. If you can think of something more memorable then I’d go with that, but in the meantime we’re stuck with the “2.0″ suffix so we might as well run with it.

Sorry, I didn’t follow the links through. I realise now why the list looks the way it does having followed the trail.

Paul,

I think it’s stretching a point to say that just because media outlets use some news agency copy (which they do pay for) to cover things for which they don’t have the bandwidth that they are just aggregators.

To return to Om’s original point: if they aren’t reporting news directly and are “not all about original journalism”, why should aggregators be News 2.0 sites? Secondary activities around news are not news. There is no shame in doing aggregation or repackaging as it is providing a service to the user, but it ain’t news.

i agree with many of the points you are making guys, but if you go back to the post i wrote: we need a new description of the aggregation phenomenon.

now paul, i am not being “old media” about it. think of me as the janus man between old and new. i still work in the old media, but i am doing new media as well. i am speaking from personal experience guys.

News 2.0 sites are not all about original journalism. A lot of them are centred mostly on secondary activities based around the news. You might as well say the entirety of the blogosphere is useless because it contains almost no original journalism.

Don’t be so “old media” about it Om.

Well, I’ll presume that you’re referring to me when you say “Mashed”. I didn’t create that list - I just pointed to it on Paul’s blog, and far as I’m aware he was remixing a previous post by someone else. So I guess if you think it’s incomplete, repost a more complete list on your blog and trackback. (Sorry if that sounds like a cop-out!)

I agree with Matthew Ingram that a lot of TV and newspaper content is just repackaged from an AP feed, so I don’t really understand the repackaging angle. The only reason I wasn’t too keen on the phrase “News 2.0″ is that we seem to be putting 2.0 on the end of everything these days.

Interesting comments on whether attention scarcity is real or not. I’ll definitely give it some thought.

Aggregators (I tend to use that term for repackaging as that reflects what most of them do) don’t really do a great deal to upset the power law. By depending on ratings, they reinforce it. TailRank has some things in it that should promote specialist sites and posting to people with specialist interests. But I’ll lay money on the outcome that all you get there is a lot of power laws overlaid on each other. Whether that results in a much flatter curve remains to be seen, and I’m doubtful.

I think there is some good in the repackaging even from an “old media” standpoint. It should help encourage news editors to move away from looking in the same places for news on the basis that, if you can’t get the first or the best treatment of a story, you might as well repackage/link someone else’s instead. That might disrupt the power law with regards to the resources given over to stories - go look for different ones, not all try to be first on the few that everybody knows about. On the other hand, it might reinforce the power law as everybody tries deperately to be first to get into Digg or whatever the flavour of the month aggregator is at the time (bearing in mind that most of the online population still uses bookmarks of favourite sites as their aggregator, not one of the fancypants Web 2.0 sites).

My question, and I guess it’s really a question for Mashed: what happened to Slashot and WikiNews in that list? WikiNews was meant to provide original reporting but seems to be totally repackaged, albeit with more active editing and mixing of sources. Doesn’t it count?

And good old Slashdot: is it now so unfashionable that no-one will mention it in lists just in case people remember it?

Here is an interest set of quotes from “Mirror of War: The Washington Star reports the Civil War,” (Compiled by John W. Stepp and I. William Hill) a book I recommend highly.

“To the earliest American editors, news was whatever information of interest came to them, however old, however inaccurate. Even by 1800, no effort had been made to go out and gather news. Newspapes were often crammed with sentimental verse, pompous essays, religious dissertations and bombastic political propaganda.”

“In appearance, The Star of Civil War days still clung to British and colonial traditions. Two-thirds of its first page consisted of advertisements, many in number and small in size. Page One spaceleft by the ads often presented sentimental fiction, verse, do-it-yourself articles, and such humor as Artemus Ward yarns. Editorials appeared on Page Two, though editorials and news stories were sometimes difficult to distinguish.”

“What the present day editor calls a “new lead” was apparently unheard of one hundred years ago (146 years ago, by 2006). “New leads” meant the resetting of type. As a consequence, if a big story were breaking, the story in the old Star began with the first news to come in. Later news was hung on the end of that, and so on. The result is a chronological collection of developments where, in some cases, a report down the column will refult news published higher up.”

“In May, 1848, six New York newspapers, hungry for fresher news, pooled their resources to form the Associated Press, the progenitor, but a vastly different type of organization from the modern wire service of the same name. [...] As the Associated Press grew, it designated “agents” in American cities to provide news by wire. These “agents” were more distinguished by their facility in operating a telegraph than by their ability at reporting.”

Ring a bell how similar it reads to our current day blogging phenomemon?

RK