Journalism is in a state of change. News aggregators, message boards and social media have overtaken traditional media channels such as newspapers. These new media outlets are becoming the go to places to get the news. Sure many people still read the newspaper but those numbers are slowly dwindling and the Internet is becoming the go to news source.
Rupert Murdoch has labeled the practice of news aggregation by entities like Google News “theft,” and a professor from the Wharton Business School recently called on lawmakers to amend the copyright laws to prevent aggregators from posting any portion of news stories for a full 24 hours after their initial publication. – Who’s Afraid of the News Aggregators?
A news aggregator at its core is a website that gathers news from different sources and other Web sites and gathers it in one place for easy consumption. Examples of news aggregators include Google News which just aggregates news from other sources and The Huffington Post which mixes original content with aggregated content in one place. Sounds great right? Just one stop for all your news consumption needs from sources across the globe for free, well if your the consumer yes but as you can see above legacy media channels are not to happy about this.
http://reverb.twitter.com/view/126740849281262175 – Visualization of #ferguson
Another new source of news for many is Twitter. Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called “tweets”. Twitter also allows for these tweets to be tagged via hashtags (#) that can then be searched and every tweet with that tag will show up in a feed. This allows users to follow and comment on events in real time. For example “When unarmed teen Michael Brown was shot and killed in broad daylight in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, Twitter users quickly reacted to the shooting using the hashtag #ferguson to comment on the racial tensions still prevalent in the US today.”(SBS, 2014)
Whether these new forms of journalism will be beneficial or not has yet to be decided. But the these new ways of receiving news given users a choice in when, where and how they consume their news content and I believe that is a step in the right direction.
Brendan Vs The World 
Hi I think you make some excellent points about the changing nature of journalism and I like how you mentioned news aggregator websites. The link to the visualisation tool, Twitter Reverb was great but I think a few sentences about what Twitter Reverb is would have helped to give the reader more of an understanding about the purpose of Twitter Reverb. This source might be useful for that – https://source.opennews.org/en-US/articles/how-and-why-we-made-twitter-reverb/ it – discusses Twitter Reverb and shares some light on why and how it was created.
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I like to think that social media such as twitter is very beneficial as a news aggregator. Of course it has its flaws as a first party news source but if everyone is sharing all the information they come across and the more legitimate seeming sections of info get shared globally, it could form as a decent filter as well as a broadcast platform (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-wexler/twitter-is-the-21st-centu_b_4774976.html) This article considers twitter as a modern newspaper, it’s a good argument that I agree with mostly but I can’t agree that social media is replacing traditional media at all.
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Interesting blog post, though these newspapers are not entirely disappearing (to a certain extent). Some saw the arrival of the Internet and made the migration from the physical to the tangible to survive while others did not. These newspapers companies that made the transition, were likely to have fees for their subscribers, before the change (to the internet) and carried on doing so after. Which is why I think these news aggregators you mentioned (Google news and the Huffington Post) have large following, since they provide a variety of information for free.
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Great way to start your first paragraph! It tells the reader exactly what your going to talk about whilst keeping it intriguing. I completely agree with the whole social media part saying it has overtaken the traditional media channels it reminds me of my BCM310 blog I did on the evolution of journalism in which I discussed an interview between New York Times’ columnist David Carr and Bloomberg Media chairman Andrew Lack on where journalism is heading. If your interested take a look http://tamikalouisa.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/the-golden-age-of-journalism/. You explain the terms really well and shed more light on some things I might have missed in the lecture.
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I like how you started this post, I think the end of the newspaper will be a long drawn out process, that will conclude with the changing of generations. A nice post, very informative and educating, I feel like I have a more in depth understanding of the topic now. Keep it up
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The internet has changed media indeed! News aggregators has changed the way we receive information and has caused alot of dispute and upset with other media channels. This collective intelligence helps us receive well informed reports, and I do agree it is a good step into the future. A well written blog and was easy to understand and comment on! also found this article on news aggregation and fair use: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/News-aggregation-Fair-use-legality-and-way-forward/articleshow/42262106.cms
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I unfortunately missed this week’s tutorial so this post has definitely helped me understand the topic a lot better. The Twitter visualisation of #Ferguson is incredible and a great link. It is clear to see social media such as Twitter is playing a huge role in communicating news. I agree the fact they allow us to have a choice is what’s most significant about news aggregation. Great job, I look forward to reading your future blog posts.
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I found the way you opened by establishing a conflict between tradtional media empires and news aggregators to be quite compelling and informing. Your use of the #ferguson visualization tool was clever and interesting as well, although perhaps it would be better to either embed it in the post (if possible) or simply screen grab it and then provide a link underneath? I only suggest this because the way it’s set up here does somewhat encourage readers to venture away from your post, whch would be a shame given how well written it is.
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I agree that journalism is in a state of change, Twitter is one of the main culprits in how it is changing, people no longer relying completely on the news/newspapers, they rather first hand experiences of people even though they may not be legitimate or false. I agree that newspapers are dwindling and that they have to step up the game to compete with current trends of online media. We are still yet to legitimise the truthfulness and accuracy of data on twitter but it is developing I think.
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Twitter is such an interesting aggregator. I linked another girl to this man’s Twitter feed who was live Tweeting about the Michael Brown shooting. Something as simple as his ongoing feed about the events unfolding outside his apartment was part of a larger catalyst that is still seeing conflict and racial tension continuing in Ferguson. I’m sure you’re already aware, but the ‘official’ police version of events differed greatly from what this eye-witness was essentially live-streaming. I think that Twitter is definitely a force to be reckoned with in terms of shaping the new media landscape – aggregators are just pushing this phenomenon onwards.
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Hi. I agree with you that journalism is in a state of change where the traditional media is slowly overtaken by the new media. With the rising demand for rapid and instant information exchange and debates, with users having more control over when, where and how they consume their news content together with our changing perception toward time and space, it is not a surprise people find these new aggregators more appealing than the traditional media in satisfying their craving toward instant connectivity toward what is happening around the world. Hence, I believed that it is a wise move for news aggregators such as The Huffington Post and Google News combine both the best practices of traditional media and digital tools to disseminate news considering the changing perception and behaviors of people nowadays due to instant connectivity to the internet with the advancement of digital technology in achieving information.
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Ah the greedy and analogue mind of Rupert Murdoch. News aggregation and the aggregation of media content in general is evident in almost all forms of social media, and in a world that revolves around convenience, these aggregators are within their right to share the content. Twitter in itself is heavily focused around the aggregation and the discussion of news content – I tend to hear about news from Twitter first, before progressing to one of these aggregation websites and reading the more in-depth reports online. That’s the progression of most people’s experiences online, whether Murdoch likes it or not.
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What Rupert Murdoch says, in that quote you’ve used, about news aggregation being theft. What parts of this statement would you assume to be true?
I believe, like you have pointed out in your post, news aggregation is merely spreading credited content across more platforms and making it more accessible where previously it would have never been read. we have no excuse to be ignorant the the news, we can now view it in almost any form we please
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