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The Declining Value Of Redundant News Content On The Web.

Microsoft withdrawing its offer to buy Yahoo is a sufficiently large story to demonstrate the problem of redundant news content on the web. Google News is currently tracking about 2,000 versions of this story. To get a better sense of why it’s a problem to have 2,000 stories about the SAME THING, I’ve reproduced about ten percent of them below — just the headlines and ledes. If you have the stomach to scroll through them all to see what else I have to say about it, check out the sources as you scroll:

UPDATE: The Google News example is reproduced here instead. You’re reading this in RSS or email a day after I posted it because this post was so large it broke my Feedburner feed. Too much content breaks the web — there you have it. Keep reading for my original argument.

If you’ve made it this far, you may have noticed the absence of blogs from the sources. So this is far from a representative sample of all of the websites that published a version of this news story.

Let’s check out Techmeme, again reproduced in its entirety, because seeing is disbelieving:

Yahoo!:

Yahoo! Issues Statement in Response to Microsoft — SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 03, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company issued the following statement today in response to Microsoft Corporation’s announcement that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo!:

RELATED:

Microsoft:

Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo! — Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. — Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

MicroHoo: The Odd Couple Meetings Led Nowhere — After today’s events, I guess you could say Yahoo and Microsoft tried, holding a series of meetings about a possible takeover that ended up proving exactly how incompatible the companies were. — Kind of like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, but not funny in any way at all.

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:

OK, so what’s Microsoft’s plan B? — With Yahoo apparently off the table, it’s time to see what Microsoft’s back-up plan looks like. — Microsoft has said for some time that it has a strategy with or without Yahoo, but it’s a strategy clearly in need of a jump-start.

DealBook:

Guessing Yahoo’s Opening Stock Price — Well, Yahoo seems to have gotten what it wanted. — The company managed to fend off Microsoft’s unwanted advances, even after the software giant sweetened its bid by $5 billion — an amount Yahoo felt still wasn’t enough.

Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price — Microsoft Corp. said it abandoned its offer for Yahoo Inc., as the two companies failed to bridge a gap between them on price. — Microsoft Saturday released a letter from Chief Executive Steve Ballmer …

Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News.com:

Report: A peek behind the Yahoo-Microsoft meltdown — Curious how Microsoft’s multi-multi-multi-billion dollar buyout bid for Yahoo sputtered, then crashed? — Kara Swisher’s BoomTown column in All Things Digital has an interesting account of the missteps, sidesteps …

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Yahoo’s Nightmare Scenario: I’m From Google and I’m Here to Help! — Here’s what a top-notch source at Yahoo joked to me tonight, after Microsoft walked away from its unsolicited takeover bid to acquire the long-troubled Internet giant. — “Google is now officially our best friend.” — Oh no.

Discussion: Groundswell

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Yahoo’s Tough Week Ahead — At around 4:30 California time today news broke that Microsoft has formally withdrawn its offer to acquire Yahoo (see Ballmer’s email to Microsoft employees here). — Among other things, that ends a three month stock party where the market value of Yahoo jumped …

Yi-Wyn Yen / Fortune:

Blame it on Google — Microsoft CEO Ballmer said the software giant decided to walk away from a bid because Yahoo would become ‘undesirable’ if it formed an alliance with Google. — (Fortune) — Google proved to be the final straw that broke Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s back.

Discussion: MacDailyNews and CNNMoney.com

Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed:

Analysis of the Microsoft Decision, Plus Yahoo’s Hari-Kari — Here is my first-cut analysis of what has happened here: — On the friendly front, Yahoo drew a hard line at $37 per share, well above the $33 that Microsoft now says it told Yahoo this week it was willing to go

Discussion: broadstuff

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Email From Steve Ballmer To All Microsoft Employees — The following email was sent to all Microsoft employees from CEO Steve Ballmer at 5:17 pm PDT (see Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal): — To: “Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)”

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal (Updated)

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft pulls its Yahoo offer

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft says proxy battle not worth it

Discussion: BloggingStocks

BBC:
Microsoft walks away from Yahoo

Discussion: Gizmodo and TECH.BLORGE.com

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
BREAKING: MICROSOFT WALKS

Discussion: Digital Daily, Valleywag, Changing Way, Paul Kedrosky’s … and Hollywood Newsroom

We all know how this happened, of course. All of the print publications, including non-niche pubs like the Washington Post, have to create a version of this story for their print publication, and then dump that story on the web. All of the web-native tech sites, competing tooth and nail for page views, are all obligated to publish at least one if not multiple takes on this story. Then there are all the sites that reproduced the wire version of the story.

If each site were, as in print, an island unto itself, this would make sense — if the news outlet did not cover the story then its readers might not know about it. But seen as a whole on the web, which connects each and every one of these websites, and especially seen through the lens of an aggregator like Google News or Techmeme, this huge mass of content about the same story doesn’t make much economic sense.

I am purposely choosing not to write about the story itself, finding it much more interesting to make this meta-observation, but if I had chosen to write about it, I could have reduced the economic value of every other version of the story.

Why? Because there is a zero sum game for attention on this story. Even tech insiders will read a finite number of stories. If I put my version in the mix, for each time mine gets read, someone else’s doesn’t. So each version of the story reduces that marginal economic value of all the others.

Here’s another way to look at it. Imagine a Midwest city where a factory that is a major employer announces that it is shutting down. Now imagine that instead of one local newspaper and one local TV station covering this story instead there are 100 newspapers and 50 TV stations. Reporters from each of these outlets file their coverage of the story. Newsstands in the local Walmart display all 100 newspapers, each with the factory closing story on the cover. Anyone who turns on their TV station can flip channels at 6pm and find the same story being reported, over and over again.

Yes, that’s a silly example, but is it really all that different from what’s happening on the web?
Can you imagine a content economy five or ten years from now that supports 2,000 versions of the same story? Is it any surprise that the company that creates far and away the most economic value on the web produces NO ORIGINAL CONTENT? (Yes, that would be Google.)

Here’s the takeaway for original content creators: BE ORIGINAL

That means when you consider publishing an original news item, be aware of the larger marketplace for that news. If it’s hugely competitive, consider allocating your limited reporting resources elsewhere, and instead find other ways to create value around the story, as the Seattle Times did:

Imagine how much more value local media brands, for example, might create if they did any one or more of the above rather than publish yet another commodity version of the story. Practicing link journalism could leave more time for original reporting that ISN’T being done by other news organizations.

(Of course, the Seattle Times still publishes a print edition, so they had to have their print coverage. And Microsoft is a local story for them, so the original reporting is a rational allocation of resources.)

Here’s the other takeaway: Don’t add to the noise, help reduce it.

An engineer who works on Google News said during a presentation at the NewsTools conference that Google is studing whether the amount of news on the web is actually decreasing.

So while there’s more content on the web, there may be less news.

Final takeaway: Don’t contribute to the commodification of news on the web.

Is News Coverage On The Web Becoming Like Consumer Packaged Goods?.

The more I think about the issue of redundant news coverage on the web, the more I’m both perplexed and fascinated. Read the following on Facebook’s announcement of Facebook Connect — seriously, read it all:

Can Facebook Build a Better Passport
It didn’t take long for Facebook to react to the announcement by MySpace Thursday that it would enable other Web sites to tap into information about its users and their friends.

Facebook’s announcement, in a blog post Friday afternoon, is a bit sketchy on the details and has all the appearance of being rushed to match MySpace. Still, what the company calls Facebook Connect offers many of the same capabilities and a few more, too.

Facebook Answers MySpace Data Availability With Facebook Connect
Yesterday, we brought you news of MySpace’s surprising Data Portability partnerships with Yahoo!, Twitter, and Ebay, which will allow MySpace users to port their public profiles, photos, videos and some friend data from one site to another. Facebook, not looking to be outdone, has announced plans to launch their new Facebook Connect platform, which has similar functionality to MySpace’s Data Availability.

Facebook announces Connect, to use your data on external sites
The Facebook developers blog has announced Facebook Connect, which “allows users to ‘connect’ their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site”.

Facebook to open the gates with ‘Facebook Connect’
Social network Facebook announced Friday the debut of Facebook Connect, a new technology for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites. It makes the company the latest major Web site to embrace the concept of data portability.

Facebook: Our Doors Are Just As Open As MySpace’s
Yesterday MySpace (NWS) announced Data Availability – a new service that allows you to share data with third-party sites that will launch in a couple of weeks. Today Facebook announced Facebook Connect – a new service that allows you to share data with third-party sites that will launch in a couple of weeks.

Facebook sees MySpace’s Twitter partnership and raises it Digg
We’re at the point that when either of the two social networking giants, MySpace and Facebook, does something, the other has to respond. Yesterday, MySpace unveiled its “Data Availability” initiative, allowing other sites around the Internet to utilize its users’ data to update profiles, photos, videos and other attributes. Today, according to a TechCrunch scoop, Facebook is following that up with “Facebook Connect”. Which does, wait for it — the exact same thing.

Facebook Counters MySpace; Will Let Users Port Profile Data
On the heels of yesterday’s “Data Availability” announcement from MySpace, Facebook has just announced the launch their own initiative to allow users to port their profile data to other web sites. Here’s what will be included in Facebook’s version according to a post on the company’s developer blog:

Facebook Responds To MySpace With Facebook Connect
Facebook will announce later today Facebook Connect, which has similar functionality to MySpace Data Availability, announced just yesterday. The actual product won’t be released for at least a few weeks, so the timing on this, coming immediately after MySpace, is somewhat suspicious.

Facebook follows MySpace’s lead in letting users share personal …
The popular online social hangout Facebook Inc. says it is setting up a new system that will allow its 70 million users to take their personal profiles with them as they surf other websites.

Users will be able to automatically copy pictures, personal information and other customized applications established on Facebook to other websites without extra effort once the changes that were announced Friday take effect.

Facebook Connect syncs with third-party websites
Facebook is preparing to launch Facebook Connect within the next few weeks, a service designed to compete with MySpace Data Availability. According to TechCrunch, this is Facebook’s first attempt at creating a new version of its API for third party websites, allowing users to link to their Facebook profile, friends, and privacy to a website. The website can also use features from the Facebook Platform to enhance functionality and personalization.

Has there ever in the history of niche media been so many news organizations writing about the same thing at the exact same time?

I keep thinking that the market can’t possibly support this much redundancy.

But then it isn’t entirely redundant. One of these news orgs was first to break the story. And each brings, to greater or lesser degrees, a unique perspective — in some, cases, even some original insights.

But the juxtaposition is still so striking.

It’s kind of like walking down a supermarket aisle. There are many different manufacturers of pasta sauce, potato chips, and toilet paper — which will you choose? Which brand do you prefer? Are you brand loyal? Or do you choose always what’s on sale?

Am I in the mood for marinara sauce or clam sauce or meat sauce — ReadWriteWeb or TechCrunch or GigaOm?

In the tech news category, an aggregator like TechMeme does help news shoppers. I can click the top story, which is the Facebook blog that everyone is citing, i.e. go to the source first. Then I’ll click on the next lead item, which is TechCrunch of course. Then maybe I’ll click on MG Siegler’s headline at VentureBeat because it’s clever.

And then I’m probably done. Because I’m so floored by how many headlines there are about the same thing that I just have to blog about it.

And so I’ll probably add another headline to the pile — but since I don’t have the words Facebook and Connect in the title, I might actually get some attention — kind of like finding a jar of apricot jam among the pasta sauces. Just sticks out.

Oh well — I guess it could be worse.

Still, makes you wonder why some news orgs don’t just link to the story that’s already been published and go write about something else that nobody knows about — you know, news.

The upside is it sure keeps sites like TechMeme and Google News in business.

Just think about all the money spent on CPG advertising to differentiate all the brands of past sauce — in a marketplace with lots of competition, enabling that competition has proven to be a good business.

Some smart news orgs could find a way to profit from sorting through these piles of content that, ironically, they themselves are contributing to.

Pasta’s boiling, gotta run…

The Challenge Of Non-Local Newspaper Advertising.

Newspaper brands like the NEW YORK Times, WASHINGTON Post, BOSTON Globe, etc. face a unique challenge in the online media age — how to value non-local readers.

I received this offer in the snail mail this week from the New York Times:

New York Times Circulation Marketing

As I observed previously with my critique of the Washington Post’s circulation marketing, this marketing piece gives me, an avid reader of NYtimes.com, no explanation whatsoever as to the value of also receiving the New York Times in print (with the exception of receiving free access to some premium online services, which has nothing to do with the value of the print edition itself).

It appears the objective of this marketing pieces is strictly to convert people who already read the New York Times print edition or who are predisposed to read newspapers in print — and we all know this group of people is shrinking. For the six-month period ending March 31, 2008:

The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday. Circulation on that day fell a whopping 9.2% to 1,476,400. The paper’s daily circulation declined 3.8% to 1,077,256.

The New York Times is clear trying to bolster this declining print circulation by marketing to prospective non-local subscribers like me. The problem is that as a reader, I have little or no value to local New York City advertisers, especially classified advertisers.

This presents a quandary for “national” newspapers like the New York Times, particularly in light of the online readership of NYTimes.com.

According to Nielsen Online, NYTimes.com had 18,869,000 unique visitors in March 2008, up from 17,502,000 in October 2007, a 7.8% increase.

Nielsen’s numbers are estimates, but assuming they are directionally correct, think about the orders of magnitude we’re talking about here: 1 million vs. 18 million

You would think a media property with an audience of 18 million would be worth more than a media property with an audience of 1 million.

And yet it’s not. This is the ten percent problem.

I’m still more valuable to the New York Times as a print subscriber than and as an online reader because my advertising value is still so much higher in print — despite my not living in New York City.

Here’s the economic reality for national newspaper brands: Print readers are scarce. Online readers are a commodity.

Just look at the numbers: Washington Post Sunday print: 890,163; monthly online: 8,929,000 (almost exactly 10x); Boston Globe Sunday print: 525,959; online (boston.com): 4,184,000

But why aren’t these newspapers’ online businesses 10x larger than the print businesses instead of 10x smaller?

Here’s the bottom line business model problem: Unlike in print, newspapers create no unique value for advertisers online.

Newspapers had a monopoly over print advertising in a defined geographic area, which provided a lot pricing power for ads that were uniquely local and uniquely suited to print, e.g. classifieds.

Look carefully at the online advertising formats of most newspaper websites, and you’ll notice two things:

  • Most are direct analogues of print advertising formats
  • Most are the same as ad formats on thousands of other content sites

Take a look at the New York Times online ad formats. It seems like an impressive product list at first, but what it boils down to is a fancy list of display ad offerings.

And how many other places can you buy display ads on the web?

Just look at the name of their large rectangle display ad unit: Big Ad — you know, like that full page ad in the paper — you see it and think, wow, that’s a big ad. Problem is the BIG ad on the web site is a whole heck of a lot smaller than the big ad in the paper, despite being a whole heck of a lot more interactive and measurable.

Which gets to the problem of non-local readers.

In the market for local advertising on the web, newspapers are competing with other traditional local media companies, e.g. TV station, as well as with new web-native local publishers, and with search engines — this is a newly leveled and expanded competitive landscape, but still limited.

For non-local readers, on the other hand, newspapers are competing with hundreds, even thousands of other content sites.

That’s why the NYT’s 1 million print readers are more valuable than their 18 million online readers.

For example, here are the NYT print rates for the Technology category:

If you do the math, the cost of 1 page, or 126 column inches at the National Weekday rate of $1,233 is $155,358, to reach 1,077,256 weekday subscribers. That works out to a cost per thousand (CPM) of $144.

Compare that to the $15-40 CPMs that TechCrunch gets for displays. Imagine what TechCrunch’s business would look like if it could command $144 CPMs.

So given that the New York Times can charge 3-4 times as much to show me a technology-related ad in print than TechCrunch can charge online, is it any wonder that they are trying to convert me to a print subscriber?

The issue is even more acute because at least TechCrunch can prove that the ad was displayed, even if I didn’t pay attention to it. NYT can’t even prove that I didn’t throw the paper straight into the recycling bin.

It would seem this is a market anomaly that can’t last.

So what should newspapers with a national audience online do?

Well, one obvious choice is to stop trying to be both a local and national (and even global) media company. The problem is that for companies like the New York Times, the local newspaper supports the global news enterprise — but that state of affairs is in rapid decline.

Another choice is to produce a local print product that MORE people want to read, not fewer — the perceived infallibility of the current declining print product is a subject for another day.

There’s one other choice that you don’t often hear discussed: Find new ways to create value for advertisers online.

That’s what Google did. The value proposition of search advertising has no analogue in print or anywhere offline. That’s where the pricing power comes in.

Creating unique value for advertisers online could also help newspapers better compete for and better price local online advertising as well.

So how can newspapers and other news brands create unique value for advertisers on the web?

I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

Dear Web Applications: Where Are My Files?.

What’s wrong with the “friends connection” programs announced by Facebook, MySpace, and Google? Many people have been trying to explain the principle of data portability as if it were a new concept, but it’s actually not. It’s been on our PCs for years.

Think about the applications you use on your computer — the ones that run LOCALLY on your computer. They all produce files. You’ve got your word processor files, your spreadsheet files, your presentation files, your accounting software files. You create some data with the application then save it to your drive. You can take you take those files and put them on any other computer and open them with any application that supports the file type.

Think .doc, .xls, .jpg, .mp3

Web applications are different, because they don’t run on your computer — they run on the servers of the application provider. You access the application over the web, using your web browser.

So the application isn’t on your computer. And neither is the data you create with the application. That, too, is stored on the servers of the application provider.

Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are applications that run on the web. You can use them to create data, just like applications on your computer. You can enter information about yourself in your profile, and you can create connections to your friends profiles.

All the information is stored in your profile — on the Facebook’s or MySpace’s servers.

You can’t actually get at the “file” with your profile data. It’s in a big database, not separated out like the files on your computer.

Here’s “data portability” in a nutshell: I used the Facebook application to enter data. Where’s my file? I want to save it on my computer, and maybe use other applications to open it.

What the Friend Connect programs do is let other applications read SOME of your file on Facebook, MySpace, etc. But these programs don’t let you actually take your file, save it, move it, do what you want with it, like the files on your desktop. And they don’t let other applications fully open your file.

Why won’t Facebook and other web applications give you your “files”? Because you didn’t pay for the software. When you buy Microsoft Office, you get a copy of the software to keep and use as you please, so there are no limits on how you use or store the data you create with the application.

But many web applications aren’t charging for the software. Instead, they want to sell ads, i.e. they want to be media companies. That’s how Google, a software application company, got rich. So that’s what everyone else wants to do.

But to sell ads, Facebook et al need your data. And they need you to keep using the applications. And if you can take your files with you, then maybe you — and all of your friends — will start using another application. OR you’ll keep using Facebook, but you’ll create data with another application that Facebook can’t access.

That’s why Facebook created Facebook Platform for others to build applications — so it can keep all the data.

Ask Nick O’Neill puts it plainly:

While I am a fan of data portability, the reality is that true data portability kills social network sites. If we take data portability to the extreme and I was able to export all of my data and contacts from Facebook, Facebook would be nothing more than a well designed communications platform. Perhaps in the end that’s all they will be but for now, their valuations have been based on their skyrocketing user base.

Want to explain “data portability” to a non-geek Facebook user? Ask them if they’ve saved their Facebook file to their computer. Ask them if they’ve backed up their Facebook data. Ask them where their Facebook data is.

Facebook, MySpace and other social networks want to base their business models on the absence of an application feature so basic it’s been around since the earliest days of PCs.

And the reality is that you don’t have to literally save your web application files to your computer hard drive. You can keep them on the web.

But you should be able to put them on any web server you want. And use them with any compatible application. (See Dare Obasanjo for the difference between data portability and interoperability.)

If cloud computing, web applications, and the web as OS is really going to replace local computing, it needs to have more features, not fewer.

If Facebook et al want to have long-term viable businesses, they need to keep users because their applications are BETTER. Not because users have no choice but to keep using their applications, given the inability to save a file.

Pondering Facebook, Twitter, Google, Open Standards And The Future Of The Web.

I’ve read a bunch of interesting observations the last several days that have me pondering the future of the web — I’ve been trying to put it into a coherent blog post, but as this is my third draft and it still hasn’t gelled, I’m going to try thinking out loud. See if you can connect the dots.

From Robert Scoble:

Loic Le Meur did a little test with me a couple of weeks ago. He listed his Le Web conference on both Facebook and Upcoming.org. Here’s the Facebook listing. Here’s the Upcoming.org one.

The Facebook one can’t be seen if you don’t have a Facebook account. It’s NOT open to the public Web. Google’s spiders CAN NOT REACH IT.

He put both listings up at exactly the same time and did no invites, nothing. Just let people find these listings on their own.

The Facebook one is NOT available to the Web. It has 467 people who’ve accepted it. The Upcoming.org one IS available to Google and the Web. It has 101 people on it.

From Fred Wilson:

Facebook provides an incredibly valuable service to my three children. The other day I saw my oldest daughter get an invite to a party on Facebook, she accepted it, and then went to look at her accepted invite page. It was her social calendar, every party she plans to attend in the next two months is there. She noticed she had another event that night and then switched her acceptance to tentative. She uses Facebook the way I use Outlook. Who cares if she can port her social graph out of Facebook? It’s not going to happen anytime soon because the social context and data FLOW through Facebook is providing enormous value to her and her friends.

From Marshall Kirkpatrick:

Facebook and MySpace have replaced email for a substantial number of young people. Facebook, though, appears to believe that some things are better off not discussed in conversations between its members.

We’ve found two instances of words that will get a Facebook message blocked and we presume there are others. The company says it’s spam control, but it seems creepy to us.

From Howard Lindzon (via Twitter):

Please do not send me direct messages on twitter. my email address is on my blog. Twitter rarely works and I only check once a day.

Some observations:

  • Google is a gateway to the WHOLE web, while Facebook is a gateway to what’s inside Facebook
  • Most people probably assume that if they can’t find something in Google, then it doesn’t exist online
  • A teenager’s friends may ALL be on Facebook, but EVERYONE who uses the internet (including those teenagers) has an email address
  • Your email belongs to you, but Facebook messages belong to Facebook

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

  • Email delivery generally is not dependent on a single service (although a given address may be dependent on a single email server), while delivery of Twitter direct messages and Facebook messages is dependent entirely and exclusively on those services
  • Google CEO Eric Schmit has wondered in the past why some companies are still “betting against the internet“

The web is made possible by open, interoperable standards for content and communication, e.g. http, HTML, hyperlink, SMTP, etc. — will the future of the web be based on closed, proprietary standards for content and communication?

No company can touch Google’s ability to monetize the use of the open web — the more people use the web, the more money Google makes. Can Facebook compete with Google by eschewing the open web and open standards? Or is Facebook betting against the internet?

Hmmmm…..

Email me if you figure it out.

New York Times Embraces Link Journalism.

The New York Times has certainly embraced blogging, but it was striking to see in this post from The Lede just how much they’ve embraced link journalism:

Scanning the financial press this morning, readers would have seen a disturbing yet familiar burst of oil news: rising prices, aghast lawmakers and protests in Europe. But another piece of bad news topped off the fray, one that was much less familiar to close observers of the oil market:

If that’s an accurate assessment, prices are going to have to double another couple of times to bring demand into line with supply,” Kevin Drum wrote at The Washington Monthly. “$500 oil, anyone?”

Already, a financial blogger was out of the gate with a renewed call to boost domestic oil production

What prompted the new jump? It’s never an easy question to answer, as The Washington Post explained in its lead coverage today

As for today’s uptick to $135, another report from Bloomberg News blamed traders engaged in wrong-way betting. The wrong bet, by the way, was for cheaper oil.

As Milton Ezrati, senior strategist at money manager Lord Abbett, told USA Today: “It’s the next black beast.”

Wow, just look at all the third-party sources linked here: Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Washington Monthly, Washington Post, USA Today, and an independent blogger! The value for the reader here is enormous — not only do they get Times blogger Mike Nizza’s framing and perspective, they get links to all of this original reporting and analysis on this issue.

It’s great to see “the newspaper of record” has so evolved on the web — gone are the days when they to claim they have the last word on a topic or issue. The Times realizes that there is a rich universe of journalism on the web, and they can best serve their readers by helping them find the best reporting, alongside the NYT’s own gold standard reporting.

Here’s an example of why this isn’t just linking, but link JOURNALISM:

The Post article didn’t mention the new estimate on the future of crude. But Bloomberg News tacked it on to the end of an article suggesting that, far from being to blame for the soaring cost of oil, OPEC was in fact powerless to control it, according to one official:

OPEC has “no magic solution’’ to the surge, Qatar’s oil minister said. Prices are “out of the hands’’ of the organization, according to Libya’s top oil official.

Nizza isn’t just lazily linking to these stories — he’s read them, compared them, identified shortcomings, extracted key facts and issues, and connected the dots.

In a traditional newspaper article, all of these facts and analysis would have been synthesized, but the reader wouldn’t have had the opportunity to read for themselves the source material. This post does what journalism is supposed to do — empower people with facts, understanding, and perspective about important issues.

And the Times has clearly gotten over the red herring fear of “sending people away.” The Lede has helped readers make sense of what they read elsewhere, helping to make the Lede more essential than those other source. In my case, the Lede actually helped me figure out what else to read on this issue — by sending me to high quality sources on a topic of interest, as Google does, the Lede has ensured that I’m going to come BACK for more.

In other words, the Times has given me a reason NOT to go to the WSJ or The Washington Post first, and instead come here first — linking to your competitors is a great way to disintermediate them.

I found this Lede post on the front page, as a supporting item to the original reporting for the print newspaper:

The print story quotes lot’s of sources, but of course it has no links, so the reader has only the information that fits in the article. Readers of Nizza’s link journalism piece, on the other hand, have the wealth of many different sources.

But I think the two pieces complement each other well — the New York Times should look for ways to integrate them more tightly.

I’m waiting for the day when NYTimes.com is bold enough to feature a blog post