The Week: Aggregator or Analyzer?

The Week’s Steven Kotok today spent a lot of time on Naked Media insisting that the magazine is not just an aggregator but is really about opinion and intelligence. That they’re more pickers and choosers than smart analyzers is a common perception. From today’s WSJ:

The Week condenses commentary on the world's news into small, easily digestible bites.

Fellow show guest and media critic Michael Wolff also called the publication a “picker” of content -- in a similar way to his own Newser.com Other Wolff revelations: Newser.com plans absolutely no original content, ever. It will be profitable next year, if all goes as now. They’ll pass 1 million monthly uniques soon.

I pressed a lot on whether something like Newser can really get traction and hold on. Wolff insists there’s a great mass of people who will always be there, and want a branded news site that puts together a wide swathe of news. I lean more towards the belief that fragmentation is leading to niches of “vertical” coverage, and that those who want news of various types or on various subjects will assemble their own aggregations in a feed reader or similar. They can then look at their favorite sports, local news, international news, and so on.

The episode of Naked Media will be available on demand soon.