The Times: How newsreader programs are changing the news business
News stories from thousands of sources can now be accessed on a single web page. By David Rowan
Step aside Peter Sissons; a new generation of newsreaders is about to transform the way we discover what is happening in the world. They might look like lines of computer code, but they offer internet users instant access to thousands of customised news sources that are updated throughout the day. Whether your interest is foreign news, basketball results or the latest in nanotechnology, you can now create your own personal headline feeds that collate the latest stories from a huge range of publications of your choice.
Yesterday, between 10.55am and 11am, I read about a dozen publications, including The New York Times, the BBC's business news headlines, Le Monde, Wired News, the World Wrestling Entertainment updates and the Augusta Free Press. It took just a couple of seconds to load the relevant headline feeds, and, from a single web page, I could skim the stories that looked interesting and click to read them.
There is nothing new, of course, in using the web to aggregate diverse news sources to scan a bunch of headlines in one place. Companies such as Moreover and NewsNow have offered breaking news feeds scooped up from thousands of sources for years, and Google News scans 4,500 sources. What is different is that this latest technology is changing the way people are using mainstream media sources. No longer do you need to search for the information you want if you know that it will be automatically directed to your PC. And that negates the whole notion of "surfing" the web and keeping bookmarks or "favourites" that you click through each time you log on.
Dozens of news aggregators have become available, with names such as NetNewsWire, NewzCrawler and AmphetaDesk. You do not need technical knowledge to use them, but editors, in particular, ought to understand why they are catching on. They rely on a programming language called XML which makes information on proprietary websites available in other places, such as your PC desktop or a handheld computer. All that an online newspaper or a weblog needs to do to make its content available is to offer it in a simple format known as RSS. That (again, don't be boggled by the jargon) stands for Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary. It offers vast new opportunities for consumers to decide which news feeds they wish to receive and when.
After all the billions of dot-com dollars that were wasted trying to build "portals" or websites that would be a user's primary source of information, it might seem perverse for a news organisation to give away its headlines in a way that takes them beyond its control. After all, why would The New York Times want its news to share a computer desktop with amateur weblogs or extremist political commentaries? The answer is that, as more consumers use these newstrackers to find what they are looking for, they no longer need to visit each publication's front page or inside pages. And each time they click on a headline from an RSS feed, they are instantly transported to the newspaper's website to read the full story. All without the paper spending any money to bring them there.
The RSS revolution has been pioneered by the weblogging community, but now CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, Reuters and Liberation are among the mainstream organisations offering customised news feeds. Rolling Stone magazine lets you receive news about your favourite bands as soon as it appears on its website; individual writers, such as the columnist Dan Gillmor, let readers know each time they have written anything new. The BBC offers a large selection of niche news feeds, from foreign coverage to Harry Potter updates. And if you are a geek, a site such as Fresh News will give you the headlines from any or all of 30 specialist sources in the time it takes to load a single web page.
The power over how online news is used is shifting rapidly from the content owners to the consumers. The personal newspaper so long predicted by futurologists has arrived in the guise of RSS. Mainstream publishers who fail to keep up will miss out on increasing volumes of traffic.
(The Times, August 22 2003)
Step aside Peter Sissons; a new generation of newsreaders is about to transform the way we discover what is happening in the world. They might look like lines of computer code, but they offer internet users instant access to thousands of customised news sources that are updated throughout the day. Whether your interest is foreign news, basketball results or the latest in nanotechnology, you can now create your own personal headline feeds that collate the latest stories from a huge range of publications of your choice.
Yesterday, between 10.55am and 11am, I read about a dozen publications, including The New York Times, the BBC's business news headlines, Le Monde, Wired News, the World Wrestling Entertainment updates and the Augusta Free Press. It took just a couple of seconds to load the relevant headline feeds, and, from a single web page, I could skim the stories that looked interesting and click to read them.
There is nothing new, of course, in using the web to aggregate diverse news sources to scan a bunch of headlines in one place. Companies such as Moreover and NewsNow have offered breaking news feeds scooped up from thousands of sources for years, and Google News scans 4,500 sources. What is different is that this latest technology is changing the way people are using mainstream media sources. No longer do you need to search for the information you want if you know that it will be automatically directed to your PC. And that negates the whole notion of "surfing" the web and keeping bookmarks or "favourites" that you click through each time you log on.
Dozens of news aggregators have become available, with names such as NetNewsWire, NewzCrawler and AmphetaDesk. You do not need technical knowledge to use them, but editors, in particular, ought to understand why they are catching on. They rely on a programming language called XML which makes information on proprietary websites available in other places, such as your PC desktop or a handheld computer. All that an online newspaper or a weblog needs to do to make its content available is to offer it in a simple format known as RSS. That (again, don't be boggled by the jargon) stands for Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary. It offers vast new opportunities for consumers to decide which news feeds they wish to receive and when.
After all the billions of dot-com dollars that were wasted trying to build "portals" or websites that would be a user's primary source of information, it might seem perverse for a news organisation to give away its headlines in a way that takes them beyond its control. After all, why would The New York Times want its news to share a computer desktop with amateur weblogs or extremist political commentaries? The answer is that, as more consumers use these newstrackers to find what they are looking for, they no longer need to visit each publication's front page or inside pages. And each time they click on a headline from an RSS feed, they are instantly transported to the newspaper's website to read the full story. All without the paper spending any money to bring them there.
The RSS revolution has been pioneered by the weblogging community, but now CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, Reuters and Liberation are among the mainstream organisations offering customised news feeds. Rolling Stone magazine lets you receive news about your favourite bands as soon as it appears on its website; individual writers, such as the columnist Dan Gillmor, let readers know each time they have written anything new. The BBC offers a large selection of niche news feeds, from foreign coverage to Harry Potter updates. And if you are a geek, a site such as Fresh News will give you the headlines from any or all of 30 specialist sources in the time it takes to load a single web page.
The power over how online news is used is shifting rapidly from the content owners to the consumers. The personal newspaper so long predicted by futurologists has arrived in the guise of RSS. Mainstream publishers who fail to keep up will miss out on increasing volumes of traffic.
(The Times, August 22 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Friday, August 22, 2003
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