Embrace don't alienate news aggregators

4 February 2010

I find News International’s move to block NewsNow from linking to Times Online stories particularly odd, even without questioning its reasons for singling out one independent aggregator (nma.co.uk 8 January 2010).

Far from being a threat, NewsNow and similar sites deliver significant amounts of traffic to the linked media outlets and, by doing so, drive revenue for publishers. Instead of cutting off these sites, it seems much better business to continue working on converting visitors to paying subscribers while utilising the services of news aggregators as traffic drivers. Getting paying visitors starts with driving non-paying visitors, which is exactly what news aggregators do, at zero charge.

Second, the growth of citizen journalism, blogs and user-generated content means newspapers no longer have a monopoly over news generation and distribution. Rather than pretend otherwise, traditional news suppliers should embrace the web for what it is, and especially the popularisation of online news, which is both inevitable and irreversible.

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