One is freely available and freeform in its content, the other pricey and very in-depth. The future of news may rest somewhere in between.
For news junkies, the availability of Google News has been a godsend. Using technology based on its non-pareil search algorithm, Google culls headlines from around 4,500 news sources. The site then renders those topics, and groups stories relevant to each main topic.
LexisNexis combines full-text legal information search services with a news and business-related research offering. Journalists and many other professionals recognize it as their most important source for research.
There may be room for other services in this age of vastly connected resources. A century ago, one could employ firms to sift through the various newspapers of the day. Those newspaper clippers would search for stories of interest to their clients, cut them out, and pass them along.
In the way a computer used to mean a person capable of performing advanced mathematics in one’s head, these clippers served as the forerunners to the search engines of today.
Today, a press release about an upcoming Rolling Stones album, coinciding with singer Mick Jagger’s birthday yesterday, hit the wires. (Newswires, now there’s an old concept.) The release came from Music Industry Today, which is published by the IPD Group.
The release describes Music Industry Today as being focused on “pre-set newsfeeds edited by a team of experienced editors.” A topic page on Music Industry Today, like this one about the new album, A Bigger Bang, presents snippets of for-pay articles.
While this model may not be the future of mass media, it could be the answer for professionals across a multitude of industries who need current information on discrete topics, and are willing to trust an outside party to provide quality and convenience in exchange for a fee-based subscription.
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
