Google’s shift to hosting its own wire service stories is a notice to laggards that you can’t succeed by providing the same information that everyone else is giving away.
It’s one of my major themes that intermediaries (including Google) are increasing their role in connecting audiences with news (or all content for that matter). In an intermediated world, your particular copy of a wire service story adds little value to the mix. And at some point, adding yet another copy decreases the value of the whole mess.
In a world of networked media, news organizations need to focus on what they do best. For all but a handful of newspapers, that’s local news. They should have been doing it anyway, but Google is making it a survival skill. They may want to aggregate some national and international news for their unique audience, but editors really have to reconsider the time and energy they’re devoting generic wire stories. Expecially now that their readers can get them from Google.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.