Much has been made by mainstream media about the evils of aggregation. The ability to serve headlines to content that was produced by someone else has been held up as exhibit No. 1 for how legacy news companies are at a disadvantage when competing with pureplay (web-only) enterprises.

The fact is, aggregation existed long before the Internet. As Robert Niles accurately explains, “the newspaper industry long ago optimized the use of aggregation for its medium.”  The traditional form of aggregation in newspapers – wire services, syndicated features, letters and guest columns – doesn’t compete as well in the digital age, unfortunately.

Niles offers and analyzes several models and strategies for consideration. Which one works for you depends solely on your specific market and “where the market’s pain is: What is the community’s need?” Once you’ve identified the opportunity, “think about how you can use information that you can collect – to aggregate – to meet those needs, to alleviate that pain.”

As Niles suggests, we need to “stop demonizing aggregation.” It’s been part of the news menu – and diet – for decades. We are all publishing on a network and none of us can hope (or expect) to generate enough news and information on our own to satisfy our communities.

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