Frank Rich links, others don't

Not Brooks nor Cohen nor Collins nor Dowd nor Friedman nor Herbert nor Kristof nor Kristol nor Krugman. (The lone exception: Charles M. Blow, whom the Times calls its “visual Op-Ed columnist.”)

But Frank Rich does. From the Nieman Journalism Lab.

Why humans link better

That’s why link bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, Josh Marshall, and Matt Drudge have become such a powerful force on the web. They understood, even where traditional news orgs did not, the value of bringing their unique perspectives to filtering the web, of having a “linking voice.” They understood the editorial power of the link.

Here's another semantic web test, surely? Perhaps the new Turing Test should be called something like the Bob Woodward Cup.


Publishing 2.0 asks: Will Algorithms Make Human Editors Obselete?
And answers: Not If Journalists Collaborate

I am the Washington Post and I approve this message

Washington Post goes into links. So not just its own take on politics but other people too on its new site, Political Browser. According to Publishing 2.0:

...Political Browser was born of a determined effort by The Post to get into the news aggregation game. Eric [Pianin, the Politics Editor] told me that interest in news aggregation extends to the highest level of The Post’s senior leadership, including Katherine Weymouth — they have been “fascinated” by the success of aggregation sites like Drudge, Huffington Post, Hotline, and others.

Beyond aggregation - post-google perhaps? - comes the “stamp of approval”, trust and context. Interesting.