News aggregation for the net-savvy
Jinfo Blog

14th July 2009

By Penny Crossland

Item

In an attempt to attract new readers and differentiate themselves from their competitors, long-suffering US newspapers have been trying to devise new ways to package news to the net-savvy generation. USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com) has launched a site called Newsdeck (http://digbig.com/5babef) which aggregates the paper’s top stories in a headline format. The page bears little resemblance to a news site and in fact looks very much like a deck of cards. Each of the eight cards contains headlines on different topics, such as news, travel, money, sport and technology, with each headline linking through to the full story on the paper’s main website. In beta format, USA Today is keen to get users’ reaction to Newsdeck. The interface may appeal to some, however reading headlines on the paper’s main site, which contains photos, charts and links to other media seems to me to be a more informative way of obtaining news. Skimmer (http://digbig.com/5babeg ) is a similar, albeit more sophisticated product launched by the New York Times earlier this year. Readers are able to skim the online headlines of the paper and click through to the main story. This product however has more of a newspaper feel to it, appealing to those who are keen to browse through their news before reading articles in full. The news clips contain headlines and a brief summary of the article and there are many more sections to choose from, including blogs and latest news. Since both newspapers have recently launched iPhone applications for their main sites, no doubt it will only be a matter of time before these news aggregator products will be made available via mobile as well. It seems that newspapers are constantly having to re-invent themselves to keep ahead of their readers.

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