E-Media Tidbits

nytimes.com The New York Times offers a series of country-specific news aggregators. What's the point?

Recently Chinadev asked me if I would allow them to post content from the RSS feed of my weblog China Herald in their news aggregator. Similarly, a few weeks ago, another new aggregator, China.alltop.com, also asked to post my content. And I discovered, by accident, that the New York Times new China aggregator posted my content without asking. And there are whole row of other China news aggregators I might have forgotten by now.

Of course, I would not refuse to participate in any service that would bring traffic to my site. Also, they would actually not have to ask me to link to me. But when aggregators don't tell me they're syndicating my content to their site, it's very likely I would never discover what they're doing. And I am opposed to them reproducing my complete content, rather than just linking to my site.

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Do country-specific news aggregators still make sense if they only collect news from others, without adding any value?

Personally I don't think so -- but then, when it comes to China I might not be your average news consumer. I subscribe to feeds from many China-based blogs and sites, and I also read the Google News feed on China. Together, these are better than any aggregator I have seen. When I need news about other countries or subjects, I turn to the search engines. But I might turn to the New York Times to check their aggregators, now I know they have them.

Do you still use aggregators to get your news?