A new look at news
My reading habits have changed dramatically in the past few years, thanks to Web feeds and social news sites. It used to be that the first thing I’d do in the morning was read the day’s newspapers. Now I prefer to open Mozilla Firefox, my Web browser, and scan the latest headlines using the program’s “live bookmarks” feature.
Live bookmarks are Firefox’s implementation of Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, a clever way of delivering the latest headlines from specified websites. In an instant, I scan the latest news from just about any local or international news site I choose without first having to click through to those websites’ homepages. If a website doesn’t support RSS, I tend not to visit it.
Then I usually head off to Google News, an automated news aggregator that trawls the world’s news websites and posts the most popular stories to its entirely computer-generated homepage. That’s neat but it gets better. Google News is fully customisable, allowing me to design my own front page based on keywords I select. If I’m interested in the latest news on Robert Mugabe, I simply add it, using a keyword search, as a news category on my personalised homepage. Whenever I access Google News, it then provides me with links to the latest news stories, published around the world, about the Zimbabwean dictator.
I can even tell Google News to deliver the latest headlines about Mugabe directly to my e-mail inbox. Or have them delivered using RSS to my live bookmarks in Firefox.
The fact that I’m receiving the news I want to read — not the news an editor thinks I want to read — has made me less inclined to read daily newspapers. I took flak earlier this year for suggesting that newspapers are living on borrowed time. I concede that print as a medium is not going away any time soon. But newspapers, especially generalist daily papers, have to retool themselves for an era when most of their readers will read them online.
The Web is a vastly superior mechanism for delivering the type of content that newspapers publish. Daily newspapers in particular need to prepare for an era in which content is delivered not only on Web-connected PCs but also via Web feeds to cellphones and other portable devices.
Another trend that has me really excited is the emergence of social news sites such as digg, reddit and, locally, muti. These sites provide a way for consumers worldwide to dig up and share news articles, opinions and other items of interest with each other and vote on which items they like and dislike.
The process leads to websites that are constantly updated with the headlines of the most popular articles as voted for by readers. Think of it as the consumer-generated newspaper. Often articles one simply wouldn’t find in the morning newspaper make the homepages of social news sites — and for good reason: they make fascinating reading.
Another interesting trend is the emergence of websites that carry user-generated and user-edited (”wiki”-style) news content. Locally, Johnnic Communications has been doing this for some time with reporter.co.za and there are also a number of international examples. However, I find the sites lack gravitas (so far, anyway) and, like Wikipedia, I’m less inclined to trust them than I am major news sites which I know are produced by professional and experienced journalists.
It’s difficult to predict the ultimate impact that technology will have on journalism. What’s clear is that, like the music business, the news business is being turned on its head by the Web.
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