Thanks for all of your great comments.

Ari

Newsrooms are being cut. In order to be relevant and scale local papers are going to have to aggregate, curate and build networks. They can be selective networks, but they're goung to have to get bigger and compete for that inventory.

Along a contrary trend, they will, themselves, become ad networks. As you say, they will attempt to “own” the market in advertising both on and off site. They will probably also try to do their own aggregation, though they are less well positioned for this.

Ari

They definitely “get it” better than most.

If nothing else, it shows that there really is a wall between business and editorial!

To a great extent, we're saying that the brand of the local newspaper needs to evolve from “that printed thing with scarcity-driven advertising” to “the arbiter of what's important in a market — and — the ultimate resource for advertisers looking to reach this local audience”.

Full disclosure: I edit a small aggregator that focuses (very broadly) on health issues, humanitarian work and technology as it applies to both: http://www.TrackerNews.net. There are some twists. Stories are not organized by category, nor is there a standard navigation bar. Rather, headlines (breaking news, research papers, blog posts, websites, book reviews, e-books – print, audio, video) are grouped together for contextual relevance. Once stories enter the site, either on the green banner bar or in the left column, they snake up and down the columns for a few days before exiting to the archives.
It's a beta baby – we'll see how it works.

As aggregators go, TrackerNews is downright artisanal in its approach. Personally, it has been hugely liberating not to be tied to second-by-second datelines but driven by relevance. Most story links on Tracker haven't gotten broad play. But even if they had, the reality is that most people don't read or even see most stories. The trend has been to niche (give readers what they want) to a point of granular insularity. Tracker is an experiment in mix and match. Every story isn't for everybody, but that doesn't mean a certain level of awareness doesn't have value. And when the connections happen because of Tracker, they can actually be pretty significant.

Back the point, Tracker, like most aggregators, is delivering readers to publications, including newspapers, that might not otherwise get them. Right now, in its beta phase, there is no advertising on Tracker but so what if there was? The potential value-added is considerably more than any ad revenue garnered. There is no siphoning here.

Which brings me to a final point on the myth of metrics. How do you quantify the value of being associated with a prestigious publication? Cllcks are important, but in terms of a campaign, especially for the long haul, what is the value of being associated with a New York Times or, or, or? I live in Chicago where opening my daily Tribune has become an exercise in train-wreck witnessing. At this stage in the disaster, who would *want* to be affiliated with them? Newspapers, by ceding that there was only one narrow way to measure value, lost sight of another bow in their collective quiver. Now that bow is all but broken.

Huffpo's been pretty brilliant about not only aggregating content, but harvesting that prestige. Think about it: They got a question at Obama's very first press conference?! Pretty slick…

Clearly, newspapers are in a time of radical transition, but it's not the first time. Years ago I curated a big exhibit called The Art of the Message about the evolution of the modern newspaper, which was based on a rare, rag-edition run of Tribunes from the 1870s through WWII. Recently, Maria Popova over at Brain Pickings wrote a wonderful blog about it. Warning: There's lot of art – you're going to be taking your jaw off the floor seeing what newspapers used to be capable of: http://tinyurl.com/c8t9a8