The Evolving Newsroom

I wrote yesterday about Alltop, a new site that makes it easy to read stories and blogs on a particular topic in one place without having to set up RSS feeds and a reader.

I hadn't had a good look around yet yesterday but had begun wondering what it was like as a news aggregator and how well it would work for journalism blogs.

As if by magic, I got an email overnight from Guy Kawasaki, one of Alltop's creators, telling me about the site and pointing me to a journalism page which collates journalism blog posts.

Can't fault the content. It's got most of the journalism blogs I read, a fair few I haven't and includes my own blog which is naturally rather pleasing. In all I counted 85 blogs on the journalism page, each with the five latest headlines listed.

Hover over any headline and you get a preview of the content along with a time and date stamp so you can decide whether it's worth your time to click through. Very nice.

I like looking at headlines on a page like this, too. It's a much easier way to scan multiple blogs for good stuff to read than scrolling vertically through a reader.

Verdict: works for me.

Perhaps we'll hear fears voiced that this 'best of' approach to filtering content limits the information people are exposed to and skews the news agenda.

But I see it like travel. This kind of aggregation is like a package tour - not to everyone's taste but great if you like a crowd, have limited time or aren't a particularly confident traveller. Doesn't mean you can't book the plane ticket yourself next time and meander along on your own.

http://journalism.alltop.com is a must-visit for anyone working in journalism.

Since my last post on Twitter as a news delivery service, I've signed up for two New York Times feeds and noticed that they're using a headline-only format which solves the problem of tight space quite neatly, I think:

	nyt_world New South Korean Leader Cleared in Fraud Inquiry http://tinyurl.com/34mzyb 3 minutes ago from web
	nyt_national Justices Shield Medical Devices From Lawsuits http://tinyurl.com/35znuc 4 minutes ago from web

But while the headlines were succinct the feeds came in floods. I signed up for two, world and national, which quickly took over my Twitter page:

















It was even worse on my phone, taking over two or three screens. It made me wonder if it would be possible to stagger the timing of feeds so they didn't all go at once. It would certainly make multiple feeds more palatable to users.