Google Reader is a news briefing tool
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Here’s another reason newspapers are in such dire straits: Google Reader, which, over the past few years, has been steadily improved and tweaked so that it now offers such a complete a look at the world and your interests that no single publication can come close to its relevancy.
Google Reader aggregates news feeds from websites and blogs, and there are many competitors out there, like and Rojo.
But like just about everything Google makes, Reader seems to do the best job, integrating perfectly with all the other Google web-based applications like calendar, gmail and notes. It has that very familiar interface and, because of that, for me, it’s become my main briefing tool.
It even has the feeds from all my local newspapers.
As I went to it this morning and scanned the latest tech news I realized that the sites I go to directly now are very few. I have nearly 50 feeds from news sites and tech blogs that I check that are all updated and waiting for me when I open Reader. I scan the headlines, the story descriptions and then click to the source page to read what I find most compelling.
I can share items of interest on my feeds, add notes to them, organize them in files and tag them. Reader does what Google does best: It organizes the information I need the most.
Almost. And therein lies one last opportunity for traditional newspapers.
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt called on newspaper executives this week to create a “new format” for online journalism, including delivery methods that give consumers personalized content they want to read.
I’m sure he was thinking Google Reader.
Schmidt speechified at the Newspaper Association of America’s convention in San Diego, calling on the industry to join with Google to create products.
Amen, is all I can say. Those new products are needed to meet the new demands of a public that often knows how to find online information better than newspaper editors.
That’s the sad state of American journalism today. Those calling the shots can barely handle e-mail, let alone a key word search or RSS newsfeed. The industry is trying to catch up but, truth is, most news consumers look to Google more than their newspaper to give them the information they want.
I know. I know. That information comes from a newsroom somewhere. Google just collects and organizes it so it is easy to find. But usually, there are so many versions of that story from so many newsrooms that the uniqueness of any one newspaper’s brand is lost in the aggregate.
Michael Hickins over at Google Watch has the best summary of Schmidt’s speech, noting how various newspapers heard what they wanted to hear from Schmidt, each with slightly different spins.
But as I read the coverage of Schmidt’s speech I realized that there is no single newspaper that can meet my information needs. Their online versions have to stop being so closed and generalized and do more linking, more aggregating, like Google Reader. As Jeff Jarvis writes in his What Would Google Do book , they need to do what they do best and link to the rest.
That’s local news. And local news, closeup community news, is what Google Reader lacks.
That’s because most newspapers lack that, too.
And therein lies the opportunity.
When I hear sirens in the night in my suburban neighborhood, I want to know what happened. Big city newspapers just haven’t provided that kind of news. Nor do they tell me what my township board has on the agendas at next Tuesday’s meeting. Or the lunch menu at my kid’s school. Or that soccer practice was cancelled because the field was flooded in last night’s thunderstorm
That’s because newspapers were printed on dead trees and there was only so much space.
Now, online, it can be long tail news. A really long tail, down to my neighborhood, my subdivision.
A dozen years ago I was offered a job my Microsoft to work for an outfit called Sidewalk, which had such a vision. Alas, I couldn’t get out of a contract that had me working for a TV station. And that turned out to be fortunate because Sidewalk, after launching in a few cities, became mired in Microsoft bureaucracy and the one-format-that-fits-all template that corporations consistently and stupidly impose. It failed. But the original concept was an idea ahead of it’s time.
I think that time is now here.
Online, there’s no space reasons why newspapers can’t let us find out what we want about our communities.
The reason we can’t is because newspapers are still thinking big picture, being the paper of record. That’s just beyond their niche now. Google Reader and other aggregators do that.
And newspapers don’t have the staff to be that hyper local. Besides, they generaly still look at readers as an audience, as customers, as eyeballs, instead of partners whose connectedness through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can be leveraged to supplement and fill in those coverage gaps.
Do what you do best and link to the rest.
Google Reader tells me everything I need to know except what I most want to know: News from my local community, my neighborhood.
Someday, someone is going to figure out how to collect and report that kind of news.
I’m not betting it will be newspapers.
But you can be sure it will show up on Google Reader.
This article was posted by Tech Reporter Mike Wendland. It has been archieved under What I'm Thinkin'.
