Conceding that online readers want a smorgasbord of news rather than a limited menu, the Los Angeles Times is developing a new Web site that would include content from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other rival news sources.
Los Angeles Times NewsPoint will be one of the first “news aggregator” sites affiliated with a major publisher when it launches next month.
The move comes as Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. are drawing thousands of readers daily with news.yahoo.com and news.google.com, searchable news sites that take content from hundreds of sources that include newspapers, television station Web sites, Web logs, wire services and trade publications.
“The notion of people getting news from one limited source just doesn’t apply any more in this media universe,” said New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen. “There’s going to be a big period of adjustment ahead for the major news players.”
The Los Angeles Times, like many papers, has operated a Web site since the mid-1990s that now includes content from the print newspaper, wire services and the Times’ dedicated online news staff.
With NewsPoint, the Times is moving into the mix-and-match world of news aggregators, which cull stories, photos and even audio and video from thousands of sources selected either by human editors or automated search engines.
The Times is developing NewsPoint in conjunction with Consenda LLC, a Swiss-American company that also is developing a news aggregator for The Guardian, a leading British newspaper.
Officials at the Times, which is owned by Chicago-based Tribune Co., declined to discuss their plans for NewsPoint in detail. Xavier Ferguson, chief executive of Consenda, said the company would not comment until NewsPoint is announced.
Rob Barrett, general manager of the Times’ interactive division, wrote in an e-mail that the newspaper was looking forward to the launch. “We’re interested in trying multiple approaches especially as our site and others come up with new and more targeted ways to distribute content,” Barrett wrote.
Aggregate or else
Like many news aggregators, NewsPoint relies on technology known as “Real Simple Syndication” or RSS. The technology combs thousands of Web sites for updated content, replacing out-of-date stories and photos with updated ones.
With RSS, users can filter articles according to their interests in essence allowing them to create their own custom newspaper. For example, someone who lives in Pasadena, follows the Lakers and works in real estate can customize the Web site to deliver local Pasadena news stories, Lakers scores and columns and industry news about real estate not exclusively from the Los Angeles Times but from other sources.
For years, newspaper publishers have resisted news aggregators while building up their own Web sites. The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal, among other papers, allow Web site users to set preferences, but the stories are limited to content from the newspaper itself not rival sources.
Google’s aggregator includes content from The New York Times and Los Angeles Times (but not the Wall Street Journal, which is limited to subscribers), as well as an array of other Web sites. Yahoo’s aggregator does not include stories from major newspapers.
Many niche Web sites and blogs have been using RSS technology for several years to package stories from a variety of sources for a specialized audience. Robert Andrews, a reporter and news editor for several Web sites, sees the move as a defensive measure.
“It’s a protection play; they want to be the primary destination and guide for readers who can now pick and choose from a diverse range of news sources,” said Andrews. “They’re saying, ‘Sure, read stories by RSS whenever you want as long as they’re our stories.'”
Barrett said NewsPoint, which is tentatively scheduled to launch in mid-August, might include aggregated classified ads.
Newspapers have lost millions of dollars in classified advertising particularly help-wanted and rental ads to Web sites that allow users to search thousands of listings in a matter of minutes.
A classified aggregator would allow readers to search classified ads not only from the Los Angeles Times and partner sites such as CareerBuilder.com and Apartments.com but from other sites. It could slow or even reverse the migration of people from the newspaper’s Web site to those of unaffiliated sites such as Craigslist, if the Times could work out agreements to access the content.
Similarly, a news aggregator could preserve newspaper Web site audiences by giving people a broad array of news sources under the Los Angeles Times umbrella. But it’s unclear whether rivals such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, both of which are listed on the beta version of Los Angeles Times NewsPoint as contributors, would want to participate. Officials at The New York Times and Wall Street Journal declined to comment.
“This is going to create all sorts of interesting partnerships, not only with newspapers but also with other Web sites,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director for the New York consulting firm Jupiter Research. “There are all sorts of models we’re going to see in the next few years.”
