Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 has been working to circulate a new term that he coined: “link journalism.” It’s the process of aggregating stories from on-line publications and blogs that has made outlets like Drudge and the Huffington Post lucrative with minimal overhead, and could be better applied by existing news publications, or used effectively in all kinds of independent niche markets.
For a journalist like me, who often loves the act of research as much of the writing, it’s an appealing concept. It’s also appealing to me as a reader because of the vast amount of news and information that exists out here in the digital wilds. I could use a few more trusted sources drawing up signposts to help me find my way around.
While many news sites link to discussions out in the blogosphere through bot-discovered links and keywords, it’s often clear that no human hands were involved in the process. For example – a post I wrote about Barack Obama’s speech about race on my personal blog a couple of days ago appeared on CNN.com as though it were related story about Brook White, a contestant on American Idol, I’m guessing because I talked a lot about being white. No matter how many filters are applied before that link is generated, it ultimately takes a sentient being with the ability to read, interpret and analyze to truly keep those kinds of mistakes from occurring.
What do you think? Is the ability to lasso and present a group of stories that are interesting to a particular readership enough of a skill to be called journalism?
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[...] of Huffingtonpost.com and Tom Curley of the Associated Press. They square off for 15 minutes about link journalism and making money with wire news in the digital [...]