Aggregation the future?

Maybe being a news aggregator is the way to go in this industry.

I am following the example of media commentator and Guru Roy Greenslade who from tomorrow is running part of the daily comment that is sent to readers of Editorial Intelligence.

According to the blurb Editorial Intelligence or (EI)

helps you navigate through the millions of words expressed in the UK print and blogosphere every day with time saving summaries

So rather like RSS then? Well not exactly

We read hundreds of thousand of words of comment and opinion published each day in the UK in print and on blogs to bring our clients – by 9 am each weekday - a summary of all the arguments and opinion.

We’ve divided the Comment into ten categories:

All Comment summarised
Business & Finance
Environment
Human Rights, Law, Justice
Education
Health, Family & Welfare
UK & International Politics
Security & Defence
Culture, Media & Sport
Science and Technology
Clients receive only the summaries they need and can upgrade their subscriptions to receive more tailored searches. For example, if you want a summary of all Environment comment but also want to know exactly what has been said over the last six months on Carbon Footprints in particular, e.i will help you.

And of course there is a price.

Some sites already do this.I am eternally grateful to Politics Home which provides a listing of all the comment and analysis from the UK papers and the best of the blogosphere in political journalism.I am sure that if I search the internet I will find a similar service for other topics

Over in the States Newser provides a similar service.Its founder ,Michael Wolff,believes that

newspapers and traditional broadcast media will fall to an imminent death. So as a means feed the enormous demand for news he created the online news aggregation site

.

His site is slightly different in it is

set up in a visual grid format so that readers can see the day's happenings pass before their eyes. He describes it as a real-time visual for the day's events, a "kind of narrative through which you can literally watch the day go by."

But comparing himself to operations such as the Huffington Post or the Drudge report,the site is pure aggregation.Sites such as Politics home or the 1st Post over here also add their own content

The question is for EI is whether people will be prepared to pay for someone to be their RSS filter.Is there a value that can be put an automatic sifting of content into categories or is that part of the fun of switching on your machine in the morning?

Roy Greenslade certainly thinks so

The wealth and breadth of the available material is the reason that niche aggregations of the media are now so important.