Five tips for editors and writers to practice better aggregation journalism

We've recently had a big push internally to remake our editorial staff into digital-centric editors. As part of that, we're getting into aggregation journalism. That entails setting up our editors with RSS readers (Google Reader), teaching them how to add and monitor feeds from multiple sources, and most importantly, how to aggregate and report on what others are saying.

Aggregation journalism is fairly controversial. Merely repeating what others say has dubious value in the eyes of many. Of course, if an editor can bring a story that someone else wrote to their audience who may not have seen that story, there's value in editor-as-filter. That's why people follow bloggers and Twitter, after all.

So the question becomes, how can editors take an article they found elsewhere and add value for their specific readership. I put together the following tip sheet for our editors, and so I share it with you now. Warning: Much of this will seem obvious to seasoned Internet gurus who are the likely readers of this blog; keep in mind, this isn't for you, it's for the editors in your company who, unlike you, are likely on a very different spot on their Internet learning curve.

1. Make the headline compelling to entice readers to click. It's surprising how many print-centric headlines still make it to the Web. A Web headline has to work much harder than a print headline does, both because it needs to entice action, and because it is often encountered as a link by itself without the luxury of a surrounding two-page spread with photos, captions, call-outs, etc. We've recently started writing two headlines for each story--one for print and one for Web.

2. Don't merely regurgitate or summarize. Add your own perspective borne of the expertise you've acquired covering your beat. In this way, you take someone else's article, refract it through the lens of your expertise, and make it something unique and special to your audience.

To show an example, consider the following. One of our editors found an article on a consumer-oriented Web site about misleading food labels. Our editor wrote:

The FDA is cracking down on labels that deceive consumers. But at a time when money-strapped consumers are demanding honesty in their brands, doesn’t it make good sense for CPG companies to be policing themselves?

The first sentence summarized the article he found on the consumer site. But the second sentence came straight from him and was specific to his audience of consumer-packaged goods (CPG) companies. He took something that on its face wasn't meant for his audience, and made the connection to his readership.

3. Use active, verb-based phrases for link text when linking to other articles. This is such a common convention on the Web that it may seem crazy to have to even mention it here. But I have found that for editors who aren't experienced in selecting the appropriate text to link to another article, this takes some getting used to. They tend to want to link to the name of the publication of the Web site. So take this sentence:

A report in Causecast notes that the Food and Drug Administration is taking renewed interest in food labels that exaggerate or falsify product claims.

A lesser experienced editor may choose to link the word "Causecast" because that's the Web site containing the article in question. Our editor who wrote this actually first chose "food labels" as the link, because that's technically the subject.

But a better choice would be to link the words "labels that exaggerate or falsify product claims" because that best captures what the original article was about, plus it's anchored around a verb (or two verbs, and compelling ones at that).

4. Help the reader see connections to other issues that aren't immediately obvious. Notice I didn't say help the reader see connections to related issues--that would tend to be obvious. Continuing our example, our editor wrote:

It’s ironic that such labeling missteps continue to occur at a time when consumers are looking to simplify their lifestyles and reconnect with others and with the brands they love, seeking to develop honest and real relationships.

The entire sentence is new, and wasn't even mentioned or hinted at in the original article on Causecast. The link in the text above is a link to an article our editor ran on his Web site. In other words, he made a connection to a specific piece of original content that we published.

I think this is highly original and ingenious. Think about it: The article he's writing about is the FDA is cracking down on false food labeling claims. The obvious thing would be to draw connections to whether or how FDA is cracking down on other related things affecting consumer packaged goods companies, or perhaps how other governments are looking at food labeling claims.

But our editor saw something else: a connection between falsification and consumer trust, and how that impacts the brand. This particular editor writes about package design strategies that grow marketshare for branded, packaged products, so not only was this connection bringing some new value to the table, it was specific to his editorial mission and audience. (Yes, yes, I know the linked web site above is crappy, it's undergoing a redesign. If you must click the link, please squint your eyes first.)

5. Inject personality into the writing. This can be the toughest to trade journalism editors who've spent a career reporting just the facts. Let's face it. The writing in most trade magazines is, well, boring. And the Web is teaming with boring, warmed over pablum from the B2B press. People are attracted to writing that has authority and opinion. To quote a former editor I knew back from my Cahners days, be an "Island of authority in a welter of what".  (And that was before the Internet happened.) Be opinionated without being shrill or polemic. Mix it up a bit. Let your hair down. Remove the tie. Say what you think.

Again, much of this is obvious to most readers of this blog, but revelatory to editors and reporters that we support, who are trying to jump across the digital divide. Our ship sinks or swims with their efforts. So to editors and writers, I say: If you consistently follow these five tips, you will have a leg up on your competition--both at your current publication, or when going for your next job interview.

Publishers taking content aggregation more seriously

On our editorial desk, we're starting to have serious conversations about content aggregation. That's an alien concept to most editors who are steeped in the notion that if they didn't write about it themselves, the story doesn't exist.

Of course, they can provide tremendous value developing a list of sources, monitoring those sources through modern techniques such as RSS readers, and curating or aggregating the best of those sources and presenting them to their readers.

Against the backdrop of a debate raging in content and search circles about original versus aggregated content, Hearst Entertainment has launched an interesting experiment that's 100% aggregation. The site is called LMK (for "Let me know") and it consists of 100% automated content from other, non-Hearst Web sites organized around specific topic areas.

Hearst does employ human editors to curate the initial set of sources, but there is no ongoing day-to-day human involvement. Hearst executives said in an interview that the site "includes very good but not great pages for 2.3 million people, places and things."

I took a look myself. A couple of interesting things. First, the home page barely has any links. It's pretty hard to get into the site from the home page. Which says it's a search engine play through and through.

I clicked on "Barack Obama" and got a plain-looking page:

The news articles consisted mainly of Reuters and AP articles (due to their frequency of posting vs. other news organizations) plus one BBC and WashingtonPost.com articles. So if you're looking for diversity of sources, it seems more-frequent-publishing news outlets will crowd others out.

There was a collection of images, too. When I clicked on a few of the images, they opened up in a new window, but mostly I encountered "page not found" errors.

What was interesting was the automated "Bio" section on the right...Lots of "Preceded by" and "Succeeded by", with vital stats such as birthplace, childrens' names, birth date, etc. Many data points were inexplicably duplicated, likely an artifact of uber-automation. In general, it was a bit too automated, and thinly populated, but an interesting experiment.

Then I went back to the home page and clicked on College Football, which was one of the first topics that human editors started curating. Now THIS section was really interesting:

A night-and-day difference. First, it was much more visually engaging. But they had more than just articles (themselves separated into news versus blogs). Scores were treated as a separate content type, visually represented on several scoreboard-style widgets throughout the page, based on several upcoming matches. Articles pertaining to those matches automatically appeared in those boxes.

Photos were also treated much more intelligently here. They appeared in an AJAX-y, lightbox effect:

The underlying photo widget automatically advances every couple of seconds. When you click on the image, you get the above effect. And if you don't close out, that image automatically dissolves into the next image in the sequence, turning it into a highly engaging automated slideshow. It would have been nice to include a caption or a link to an article to know what we're looking at.

At the top of the page, there was a lot of topic-specific information architecture, such as links to individual teams, players and coaches. The information architecture changed to specifically match players and coaches.

While the hypercritical blogosphere will surely pounce on their execution, especially on the compromises that inevitably occur when substituting automation for ongoing human content origination, I give Hearst credit for trying to solve the right problem. That is, how to create topic-specific pages that are presumabl SEO-friendly (though with a complete absence of original content, this could undercut their strategy quite a bit, bit will let SEO experts correct me if I'm wrong).

The thought that went into the design and the information architecture is highly original for a media OR an Internet company, even if the content itself is not. In other words, if I were a college sports fan (which I'm not, as anyone knows me), I would be much more inclined to bookmark some of these pages, versus Google News.

By the way, Hearst plans to monetize by selling ads on these Web pages -- pages which consist of links to other people's content -- sound familiar? I don't blame them in the least. If it's good enough for Google, and it's good enough for Hearst, it should be good enough for you and me.

The conundrum of SEO for content sites

Lately we've given more attention to search engine optimization with our content sites. SEO for content sites involves, in my view, using an SEO-friendly CMS that is tuned to comply with SEO best practices, such as keyword-rich titles, headlines, and urls. Those are systemic things that can be set and forget.

After that, you're talking SEO at the article level, which is a whole different conversation -- one that involves a) the editorial organization being smart about what the correct keywords are for each topic they write about and b) using those keywords in their articles. It's definitely something editors should strive for.

But today I want to focus on an area of content Web sites that doesn't get a lot of attention -- category pages. Category pages -- e.g., a mini home page for everything on a given site in a particular topic area -- are arguably among the most important pages on a site. They offer very narrow, niched content.

In theory, search engines should love these pages. But they don't. And the nature of the constantly changing content on these pages prevent them from every gaining traction with search engines. By definition, a search-engine-optimized page is one where the copy on the page was specifically written--optimized--for a given keyword group. But if your category page has constantly changing headlines, that prevents you from having permanent copy welded into that page.  And if your pages are constructed for lead generation, you'll have sponsored links at the top of that page. So it would seem that category pages can be optimized for lead generation or search--but not both.

Here's another thing. Google is said to use over 200 data points in its ranking algorithm. One big one is links. For publishers with Web sites organized by product category that corresponds to the product categories of its advertising base, good luck getting suppliers in that market to link to your category page -- which will feature links to their competitors.

So it would seem that the traditional category page is good for humans, but not so attractive to search engines.

I think, therefore, we need to come up with a new model that's appealing to both. And we need look no further than our friend Wikipedia. At first glance, these seem to be no different than articles on any given content site. But look more closely. The content is evergreen. It's just as valuable today as it is a year from now. (Even better, each entry is updated as events change--up-to-the-minute evergreen content.)

Consider why evergreen content is so effective. Unlike traditional editorial content, which by definition follows the events of the day, evergreen content is, well, good forever. It's content designed with a much longer shelf life. A completely different way of thinking compared to the traditional editorial mindset.

Also look at how the neutrality of Wikipedia content attracts links.

As content site operators, we should rethink the content strategy and invest in original, evergreen content that should not only drive traffic from search engines, but should also provide a valuable service to site visitors who are looking for deep information on a given topic.

Apple positioned to take the lead on book, newspaper AND magazine content with tablet device

Today I saw this Gizmodo piece on how the rumored Apple Tablet is positioned to take the lead on digital publishing with its rumored device. This echoes my earlier piece claiming that of all the hardware, software and content companies trying to migrate the magazine experience to a tablet device, Apple is best positioned to win this game.
While Apple is famously tight-lipped, there's enough evidence to suggest that this tablet is going to happen.  Once it comes out, this is when, as publishers, we need to start thinking about magazine content on a serious first-generation tablet device.
Print is never going away (at least not for a really long time). But the debut of this device will mark the first time that magazines can come close to replicating the high fidelity of a print experience via a tablet device. It's a historical moment. And I, for one, can't wait to see how this future unfolds.