Why I Don't Care About News Aggregators

I’m old school, that’s why. Old school meaning old. I have nothing against news aggregators like TechMeme at all. I’m just in the tiny percentage of people who developed a habit of RSS and between that and the sites I visit the news aggregators seem like completely unnecessary overhead for me.

First of all in the case of TechMeme, I just don’t personally have any need to know about some topic that’s “hot” right at this moment. If it’s that hot, one of the feeds I read will cover it anyway. I do like seeing multiple viewpoints to a story – a few anyway, but I feel like I get them. I read TechCrunch, Fred Wilson’s AVC, Kara Swisher, and Jason Calacanis via RSS. Then, other than the stuff I’m following for the TV biz, I subscribe to maybe about 50 other RSS feeds. I do peek at Valleywag for the entertainment value. If I wasn’t doing any of that already, I’d find TechMeme very useful.

Perhaps I just like picking my own sources instead of someone picking them for me. I first met Fred Wilson in the mid 90s when I wrote a newsletter about online and Internet stuff (and too much about AOL for many people’s tastes). Fred was a VC back then but he didn’t have a blog. I wish he had, because usually when I’d hear from him it was to hear how wrong I was about something! : ) Then as now, I don’t always agree with what Fred thinks, but I like how he thinks very much.

Same for Swisher, and Calacanis (both of whom I’ve also known for years) and Arrington (who I’ve never met). These and others become my news aggregators. If they link to something I think I want to or should read – I click it. Even though I may not always agree with what they are saying, I trust them to speak their minds. How Calacanis behaves or how Arrington handles embargoes, I just don’t really care about any of that stuff. I read them and others for their thinking and to help me think about things.

I read a lot of other blogs besides those “A-List” folks, but mostly I am a New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and LA Times guy. And because I live here, the San Francisco Chronicle (mostly for sports and restaurant reviews).

Angela Penny, knowing that I loved baseball told me about BallBug from the makers of TechMeme (essentially TechMeme for MLB). But I read the Chronicle, the NY Times, The Washington Post, ESPN, etc – how many versions of “Paul Byrd took HGH” do I need to see? Honestly, I didn’t even need to see the one, the bigger story on that front would be “Player X can prove he didn’t take performance enhancers!” But I promised no more steroid rants.

Summer of Love 2007: Scandal in Silicon Valley

OMG OMG OMG!

Michael was paid (gasp) by Microsoft to say something about Microsoft. Gasp again.

Even though it ran where an advertisement normally ran, it was text. Since Michael is a writer and it was text, which is writing, even though it was an ad where an ad was, people might have thought it was not an ad, but just Michael writing.

If people couldn't infer that since it was an ad and Michael was endorsing Microsoft, that Michael wasn't paid...you have to be kidding me!

Nick just couldn't stand for it and posted something on his blog. It sort of made it seem that what had actually transpired was that Pfizer had paid the New York Times to run an endorsement of some new radical cancer drug, and the New York Time's ran the ad on the freaking front page only it looked like a news story.

Meanwhile back in New York, Fred thought Nick was being kind of dumb.

John who was somehow responsible for the thing in the first place took it on the chin and said there should have been some disclosure somewhere that they were paid endorsements. But they were ads and so this strikes me as John trying to make Nick happy without actually making any sense in the process.

Michael thought Om was lacking in fortitude under attack and that John threw him under the bus and I didn't get the impression Michael found John exactly manly in all of this.

Where are the gentle people with flowers in their hair and LSD?

Is the LSD here for "Let's Start Disclosing" or is it "Let's Stay Dumb"?

Disclosure? Do you expect every Lebron James commercial to end with Lebron saying, "Nike pays me to endorse its products."

I know, Lebron isn't a journalist so it's not a valid comparison. But it is, because it's a freaking commercial. I don't care whether Michael is or isn't a journalist. If I see someone endorsing a product in an advertisement, I expect that it's a paid endorsement. Anyone would be safe in always going with that expectation. I do. Disclosures seem pointless if it's a given.

I remember John a little bit from the 1990s. I didn't know him, we may have exchanged a few e-mails. I heard him speak a few times. He struck me then as someone who thought WIRED magazine was more important than the New York Times. He and Nick both are striking me that way now.

Let's look at the subscriber numbers for both.

Let's not and say we did.