In June of 2008, The Hartford Courant cut 95 jobs from its news department, roughly half of its news staff, in two rounds of layoffs. But within a few months, with an online news hole to fill and a reduced staff, the paper started aggregating local news from surrounding dailies. (Patterson and Wilkins, 2011 p. 38)
The above example, taken from an article written by University of Missouri’s Chad Painter and reprinted in Patterson and Wilkins’ Media Ethics: Issues & Cases, highlights a growing trend in journalism: As resources get cut, news outlets are increasingly turning towards content aggregation to fill gaps in reporting.
The concept of aggregation, as Painter describes, is fraught with ethical challenges. For one, is it ever acceptable to take the work of
other journalists, even when such work is given proper attribution? Furthermore, how can journalists who take the work of others ensure that work’s credibility?
There are many within the field who would just as soon eliminate the practice altogether. The Associate Press, for example, is battling aggregating websites like Google over use of unauthorized content.
But what of readers? Given the rise in popularity of aggregation websites, most notably The Huffington Post, it seems readers, at least in the online space, are less concerned with the source of their information as much as they are with finding it in one convenient place.
A more interesting example has arisen in the news weekly, The Week. While other news magazines have declined in both readership and advertising revenue, publishers of this news aggregator were expecting in 2009 its first profit since its creation in 2001.
Is such success an emphatic vote of support from readers for news aggregation in general? Is traditional, unique content a thing of the past? Will the future of journalism comprise a murky web of watered-down content sourced from one outlet to the next?
Not necessarily. If the success of The Week tells us anything, it’s that readers respond favorably to news aggregation when it’s down responsibly, ethically and sourced from respectable news outlets.
Take, for example, this article that introduces Pete Rouse as President Obama’s new chief of staff.
It’s an important subject, one which The Week presents by pulling from good reports by The Washington Post, Politico and The New York Times, just to name a few. Whenever information is sourced from a third-party news outlet, The Week includes a hyperlink. In nearly all cases, each citation also includes the original author’s name and the publication for which they write.
There’s a sense of transparency here. The Week makes no claims of original reporting, making very clear this particular article was sourced from third-party news outlets. But by pulling together relevant information from some of the most venerable journalistic institutions in the country, it establishes an impressive level of authority by association.
Of course, the effect would be lost if not for the enterprising efforts of other journalists. In this way, The Week is a parasite of sorts. Sure, it’s a respectful parasite, one whose methods might work for the time being, but what happens as the parasites proliferate and the number of willing hosts dwindles?
1 comment:
News aggregators and the journalists they get content from have somewhat of a symbiotic relationship. Yes, aggregators can be viewed as parasites. But because of the exposure aggregated content can bring,some journalists and their media companies are finding audiences that they may not have otherwise. It may not be far fetched to believe that increased subscriptions or viewership can be gained in the process. I also don't buy the idea that a "level of authority by association"results automatically from aggregated content. The beauty of the relationship that includes the audience,in my opinion, is the ability to collect information from multiple sources and then decide for yourself.
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