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Andrew Golis of TPM writes:
On the aggregator side, Karp couldn’t be more wrong that “Drudge has NO COMPETITION!” Huffington Post is first a foremost an aggregator and is investing huge amounts of money in hiring up a reporting staff to reach the hybrid model he’s describing. At TPM, we launched an aggregating front page over a year ago that sends hundreds of thousands of pageviews a day to sites other than TPM. And we had a reporting staff before we launched the aggregator that’s only grown since.
The story to watch is not if, but how these hybrid models develop.
People want more information on a landing page than one site can generate — even the New York Times is coming to terms with that, and as Golis says, will launch "Times Extra," which has links to its competitors’ pages.
The question is how you balance original content generation with links to other sites. I frequently find myself in battles with our contributors because people want to be able to quickly digest what’s going on without having to drill down into a long piece to figure that out. It becomes more important as we try to balance on the FDL front page all the great content we get from our affiliate sites.
So what is it you think people want in a news site?
38 Comments
I prefer to roll my own.
I think what you’ve done with the site is perfect.
A friend complained to me about posts I sent to him from this site way back in the beginning. Blogs, he said, are only one person’s opinion and that he didn’t have time to read them all. Especially the long winded ones.
Then one day I hit a nerve with one emailed post and got it back next day in an email forwarded to all of his contacts with a recommendation to take the time to read it.
Now I get stuff from him from HuffoPo, Media Matters, and really anti-Repug articles from Market Watch.
I think he dips into the Lake as well but refuses to admit it to me. Point of pride or shame I guess.
I really like the setup here.
Favorites at one site.
That’s a pretty broad question! Here are two specific thoughts to try to address part of the question.
1) I really miss the FDL “news box”- I thought it was a great resource- and gave prominence to stories (links) that commenters have posted, and that might otherwise get lost in the flow of comments.
2) On the whole, I like the longer posts at FDL that go into detail and provide a lot of links. Sometimes I click through all the links, sometimes I don’t, but if it’s a topic that particularly interests me, and I need to know more, I bookmark and go back later. Another great resource, and I appreciate the time that the commenter has taken to pull together a lot of information.
That said, the accessibility and readability of long posts can differ a lot. For me, it is not a matter of length, but of differing writing styles and how the information is presented.
I get drawn in when the writer starts off with the “take home message”- stated clearly and up front/ at the top. Thus: This is what I’m going to discuss, and this is why it is important. Then: writer expands on the key point/s in a step by step fashion.
On the other hand, my mind glazes over when reading though a long post that seems to be a bit of a ramble mixing info with opinion throughout (even if there are a lot of links), or a long post that includes many huge block quotes from links, and/but I have to figure out the point as I go along, instead of the writer cutting to the chase.
Summary: not all long posts are the same. Some are more effective than others, some more readable than other, and imho this has to do with writing style.
And, it does take extra effort to make an/the argument in a concise way. (I know this well from writing grant proposals that have strict word limits.)
Mark Twain: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” link
You could be channeling me, VG. I agree 100%.
Sometimes you need a long post. Some people handle that well, some don’t. Ian always does. Scarecrow does a good job too. Sometime it’s a matter of hitting the right time when people have the attention span to read through it.
I try to urge people to shorter because, as you say, it is more difficult to say something well and say it concisely, but I think we owe our readers that.
I miss the long posts because the writers here were playing to their strengths and I profited from their knowledge.
I don’t consider FDL a news blog. Never have, never will. If I want “news” I read my RSS reader (www.newsfirerss.com linker not working) which is my aggregator of choice. I pick the feeds I want to keep up with and it works great. It is also easily searchable which helps when I can’t remember where I read something.
I feel like I’ve been getting vertigo at FDL lately so I’m spending less time here except when there’s something breaking that I know the community will show up for.
That’s my opinion. YMMV.
Thanks, Jane. I’m glad what I said made sense.
And, I agree with the you on the names named. Ian always does a superb job of laying things out, and Scarecrow’s posts are easy reads too. Models for others.
My sensibilities on this have been honed by having to edit my own stuff (grant proposals, research papers) down to the bone to meet word limits. Probably takes 60% of the time to write the first version, and then 40% of the time for me to edit it down.
And, I’m sure your sensibilities have been honed by newspaper reporting/ writing, and movie making. Movies don’t have a word limit, but they have the analogous- a time limit, or time constraints for telling the story. I’d guess that “a lot of really good stuff” gets dropped on the cutting room floor. It just has to be that way, for the sake of the final product, and for the sake of the audience. Same with writing. xxoo
And, speaking of Ian, his latest post at FDL http://firedoglake.com/2008/09…..-it-right/ is a perfect model for how to give the main points up top, and then lead the reader through the details.
By way of observing my own behavior, I scan the comments for links to articles and have found the quality to be exceptionally good. The best of them, I forward to friends via email. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult to write a software script that would do that automatically and attach the name of whoever posted the link and even a link back to the comment in which that link was found. Dataminers call this policy, “collaborative filtering.”
Hi, VG!
It is hard to keep up here with all of the great additions. Titles that explain well what the article is about help a lot.
TPM is my first stop for news alerts and the FDL family my primary blog territory.
But my daily go-to progressive news aggregator is cursor.org. Their format of short paragraphs ganging multiple related hyperlinks crams a large amount of linky goodness into a relatively short and easy-to-consume format. They often feature high-quality links that are nonredundant with the ones that circulate and get re-posted within minutes at the major sites.
I send Cursor money and wear their T shirt.
I agree with Valley Girl, really miss the news box. Longer posts are fine, depends on how effective the writer is. Jane is so right about Ian, this guy can educate.
I think that Firedoglake has grown wisely and effectively since Emptywheel has been available on the front page. I’m reading a lot of Oxdown, and the Silo. I have my aggregators of choice for US, Canadian and Québécois news.
This is as good as it gets.
News box is coming back, we just needed the space for recommended diaries.
We love our news gatherers.
I do miss the ‘let it all hang out’ pile on the snark posts ,even though I am astounded at the growth this place has gone through, somehow I still see a place for those, once in a while.
Please?
Too much seriousness gets to be a drag after awhile.
There are so many opportunities to go after the completely ridiculous remarks coming from the other side, how can you pass them up?
Just my .02.
FDL is still home, it just has a lot more rooms now.
Busted
I am a big fan of certain aggregators, I particularly like http://www.buzzflash.com.
Marcy, give me Marcy or give me death.
I clicked through to your post because when I read aggregator I thought feed reader.
For my taste, one or two atom feeds from progressive sites is enough to get the news without too much redundancy.
So, I guess, google is my aggregator of choice. I use google reader supplemented by google news alerts. As google Chrome moves more features into the browser chrome, the way firefox has incorporated many feed reader features into the browser chrome, I’ll likely use the browser chrome more as an aggregator rather than any one particular page.
agree with Busted Knuckes — FDL is home, even with more rooms.
Still, I always head to the kitchen for the food (Marcy), especially in the morning before I drive to work.
I liked the news box, too.
Miss Pach.
Lindsey and Ian are great.
As space is always at a premium on webpages, wrt to News, you might take a look at the idea of a single line news crawl. A good example can be found on the front page of the BBC News.
There are of course limitations on the crawl used at The Beeb:
1. Visible only on the front page – Solve by including on each page.
2. Visible only at the top of the page – Solve by “free-floating” so it stays visible as one scrolls down.
I think Oxdown will help with that. My diary today about David Brooks is kinda old school FDL bloggy.
They don’t have to be front pages, and anyone can jump in!
tyvm. so busy, would be nice if I could write more.
Hey Busted-
I gotta agree with you about the snark, and hope that there is still a place for this at FDL. Well, of course there is, bec. of WaterTiger and Thers posts.
And, I have to say that after I first found FDL, way long ago, I stayed for the Jane snark. Not just snark, but her intelligence in using that as a tool/ weapon to get people riled up for a greater good. Not all snark is equal, of course. Jane’s snark, educated, intelligent, and straight to the bone is imho the best.
I also agree, Busted, that these are such dire times that a good laugh is really really therapeutic.
Hello Pach! Glad to see you here.
For an aggregator news site, I’m happy with the competition between Talking Points Memo (A-1 for American politics), Huffington Post (more of the cultural blather) and, yes, plain olde Yahoo (which has local weather and sports, easy access to basic financial news, and easily lets me compare AP reports to Reuters, Agence France Press and other reports), and then I’ll go to Bloomberg for deeper financial.
FDL, to me, is not a news site as such, but it’s one of my top five because I see you as more the aggregator of intelligent comment. Your writers are the best, let’s keep it that way — Ian has been red-hot lately, yet I get fearful reading him that he’s too far gone in the most pessimistic vision. I have stuff to do this afternoon, so i didn’t dig into his post that’s near the top now at 4pm Tues Pacific, I hope he justifies his claim that a DeFazio bill would lead to a “japanification” of failure to grow, why??
I spent my time commenting here, now I got to decide whether to do my jobs or go back and read Pacachutec …
I don’t consider FDL a news site. The main thing here for me was the community.
I do appreciate the opportunity that exists here for many voices to express themselves, especially now with Oxdown. I look forward to creating some posts myself.
It’s taken a while to adjust to the new format with the rapid fire content, a lot of which I have to say I skip. I check in during the day and if I see something that peaks my interest, I come back and read.
I don’t feel the sense of community here anymore since there are so may places to go for content. Also, my life has changed and that has impacted my online time and habits.
As far was a landing page goes, I like a clean layout that loads quickly, with a font that’s readable. TPM has a good feel to it. Huffington Post has become a jumbled mess. The one thing that stands out about the new format here at FDL, is that it feels like a online magazine, more so then most other sites.
Listen, I’m all for aggregating sites, and in fact, I publish one for an industry myself. It’s well received, and I don’t have to do much of anything except act like a specialized librarian.
That’s okay on blogs, too, but it shouldn’t be the primary focus of the blog. I refuse to adhere to any blogger’s creed, but I’m sure as hell glad that as they point out to me articles I don’t have time to find, they give me their informed take. Often I agree, sometimes I don’t, frequently I’m more informed and am armed with a bibliography of sorts with which to go into battle. As opposed to, “Well Jane said” or “Digby says,” etc. Buzzflash is primarily an aggregation site, and I rarely visit it because the visual formatting is horrendous and there’s effort involved in getting to their own commentary — it’s not on the home page. I prefer TPM to Buzzflash, even if I’m almost completely in synch with the Buzzflash take on things.
I leave it to your judgment to do what you think works best, but some combination of both is fine with me. You do a fabulous job. Thank you.
Mad Dog — please, no crawlers — very distracting! my 2 cents.
Busted: “FDL is still home, it just has a lot more rooms now.” YES!!
karen
Jane,
Firedoglake is my online home and family
I have never missed a breaking story while here.
Have total faith in you, Pach, and all the other behind the curtain crew involved in direction and evolution of the site
I can sympathize with that.
Personally, I can’t stand the “dancing polar bears” stuff and suchlike on the zillions of websites that are produced using Adobe’s Flash.
As a Techie, I’m able to disable Flash on my systems, so I avoid most websites’ flashing trash. The downside is that this also disables all the YouTube stuff as well.
If FDL (or other sites) have embedded a YouTube that I want to watch, I have to re-enable Flash to watch it, but again, as a Techie, no big deal.
Though I don’t care for distracting, flashing stuff on my monitor, I do have to say that the news crawl used by The Beeb doesn’t seem to hit my distraction threshold.
Just my 2 cents…and with your’s, we’ve got 4 cents. Anybody want to make it a nickel? *g*
You really nailed it for me. If I read something on FDL, I trust it. FDL has a moral center. I don’t have nearly that level of trust with any other news outlet.
For me the reason FDL has had so much success is that it’s a constellation of value. It makes me more fluent about current political issues, the personalities driving the discussion, and the media that covers them. Also, FDL is accessible, extremely timely, it has an educational dimension, and it’s entertaining. Jane, as you know, I really think the success is due primarily to your deft sensibilities.
Jane,
This is a great question. I don’t have time to provide a thoughtful answer right now, but I’ll try to come back in a few hours to do justice to this question. Until then, TTFN,
Bob in HI
Marmaduke.
There. I said it and I’m not ashamed.
In the “too hot,” “too cold” comparisons, I look at how much material the site front-pages. Common Dreams presents great stuff, but just the author and title is far too little. Smirking Chimp presents nice, big chunks upfront. Probably too much as it takes awhile to see what the whole day features. By presenting really basic, concise pieces, Think Progress does a really good job. Cursor does it in a really cool fashion that I’ve tried to more-or-less mimic on my own site.
I dunno, I think firedoglake does a pretty good job of balancing their important “front page” stories with easily-found back, older stories. I think the two front-page description styles, the top two or three pieces vs the older pieces with shorter descriptions is a pretty good compromise, though sometimes the older descriptions are a bit too short and cryptic for my tastes. I like that sometimes y’all use a middle set of sentences as opposed to just the first few sentences. Jazzes it up a bit.
OK, here I am in EPU-ville, but I want to answer at greater length.
I agree with Valley Girl @3 that I like the News Box, but how its done is crucial. A news aggregator needs to bring the cream to the top, and of course the difficulty is in identifying the “cream.” Perhaps the way to do that is to follow the lead of NewsTrust.Net, which invites readers to rate current news items, including identifying new articles into the mix. The FDL readership is an incredibly news-savvy group, and I would make it a priority to read articles highly rated by Firepups. I know there are Firepups involved with NewsTrust, and I have written reviews for it myself. The ratings feature is important.
Similarly, the diary rating (recommend) feature of DailyKos is important. FDL should employ this for all of its banner blogs, including this one.
But FDL’s forte, IMHO, is timely op-ed pieces on breaking news, ever since FDL’s live-blogging of the Scooter Libby trial, with the instant analyses provided by Christy, Marcy, and Jane. Here, the Internet has an advantage over the TV talking heads because of the live links to sources that the FDL format can provide.
And another forte of FDL is the quality of the comments. Some comments are extensive enough to be worthy of notice. I’d like to see a “top ten” comments of the day feature. Or perhaps rate the comments like the blogs. Because I just don’t have time to read them all. In fact, by the time I’m having breakfast here in Hawaii, you’re already half-way through the day, and it would be impossible to keep up.
There is not just a financial crisis in this country, but also an information crisis: There is so much information, that it is hard for anyone to keep up. Therefore what we all need is not just a news aggregator, but a news filter, which takes in all of the top news sources and blogs, and has the readers help to rate them for us.
Maybe it would be good to even have several categories of ratings, such as
* Most important news (FDL improvement on CNN’s Headline News), monitoring
NYT, WaPo, LAT (real newspapers)
AP, McClatchy, etc (wire services)
Off-the-beaten-path news
* Reader-recommended breaking news commentaries (24-hour limit)
* Reader-recommended Op-Ed pieces,and news analysis
* Reader-recommended news commentaries
And in light of the “strange bedfellows” alliance, it would be good to have in the mix the best “conservative” commentaries. Maybe a new and improved “Left, Right and Center.”
Aloha,
Bob in HI
I endorse this VG comment
also, news box is good
I’d like to second Millineryman’s comments. My attraction to FDL was the community I found here back in 2005-2006, with folks talking about what they were doing to push back against the lawlessness of the Bush administration, and to elect more and better Democrats. Posts by Jane, Christy, Marcy, Pach were only the start: the comments were written by interesting people doing what they could, where they could.
As FDL has expanded, they’ve been able to attract some very good people, like Spencer Ackerman and give them a platform. And I still drop in on the early morning threads, and wave hello to the regulars from time to time. But the site is so big now that I don’t have the time to read many posts, and seldom check the comments. I’m usually out running errands during Christy’s Saturday morning Pull Up a Chair post, but it’s one of my favorite parts of the FDL community even if I don’t actively participate in the comments. I’ve chipped in a little from time-to-time, to help keep things going and to help with the expansion.
I haven’t been using feeds. I’m mix of old-fashioned and new-fangled: I still read a daily newspaper [NYT: except for that hack Kristol], don’t watch tv at all [Newt Minnow was right, it is a wasteland], and do a blog-around check 2 or 3 times a day [TPM, TAPPED, Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Steve Benen at Washington Monthly, Altercation, Kos, FDL, and the indispensable Digby]. I get my daily dose of snark from Doonesbury and Watertiger, and a once-a-week reality check with Tom Tomorrow at Salon. I try to read Dahlia Lithwick, Fred Kaplan, Jack Schaefer, and Daniel Gross from time to time at Slate, but seldom check more than once a week. During all the financial/economic turmoil, I’ve added Krugman’s blog and Brad DeLong’s blog to the mix. I generally recommend reading anything by Mark Schmitt over at The American Prospect [still subscribe to TAP], and still enjoy most things written by James Fallows over at The Atlantic [used to subscribe to the dead-tree edition, now just read Fallows online].
All of which is a long-winded way of saying, I don’t read FDL as much as I used to, partly because it’s a bigger site with more [but not always better] content, and partly because my life has become busier and more hectic.
It’s a two-fer, Jane.
For readers, think of utility and ease of obtaining info. I personally find HuffPo to be cluttered; I rarely read it. I read TPM more frequently, but because it has content of a specific variety I enjoy, not because of the community (I rarely leave their front page). There has to be something in between these two things, a less cluttered page and more accessible content.
Personally, I have always enjoyed Salon, have read them for 10+ years — but they do a nice job of balancing content and accessibility. They do it with engaging heds and subheds on articles, with links to current and fast-moving content. The limitation is their magazine-y feel, but that’s changed a lot, with Table Talk no longer being quite as separate from the content about which Table Talkers talk. The Well has remained separate, and to some extent, could be a model for longer discussions of policy and book salons.
For the business of the site itself, think of clicks and pageviews; if aggregating information and using snappy heds pared with subheds increases clicks and pageviews, it’s a good thing for advertising and for commanding attention from those you wish to influence.
Don’t know if that was much help, but there’s my two cents.
Agree. Crawlers would be visually disturbing for those of us whose brain functions in a certain way.