The iTunes for News we have

Posted Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 4:41 a.m. by Chris Amico in News and Thinking Out Loud about business, journalism and newspapers

Let's talk about what iTunes does.

Back when it first launched, it was a companion to a piece of expensive hardware, the iPod, and a way to sell music that could be played on that piece of hardware. Both are Apple products, and the two work together as seamlessly as as Windows and Internet Explorer. One company, with a well-cultivated following, a lot of marketing and slick design, figured out how to make it easier for music fans to listen to--and pay for--music than downloading MP3s off Napster and its successors.

Did it stop piracy? Not in the least. But someone, finally, got those damn kids to pay for their music.

Skip ahead a version or two. Let's talk about what else iTunes does. It is an aggregator.

I know that's a dirty word among some newspaper types these days (Walter Isaacson, on the Daily Show, bemoaned the Huffington Post and others for linking to original content) but iTunes is certainly one of them, and for podcasts, it's the best I've used.

I use iTunes everyday. I use it to pull in podcasts (all free) from a handful of sources, most some flavor of public radio (and yes, I donate to KCRW in LA in good years). What iTunes does, and what I what I continue to wish news sites would do, is makes content easy to find, through the store, and it puts it all in one place.

We have such a thing for online news. In fact, we have plenty. There's competition among them. I have a whole category for them on Tools for News:

Feed readers.

Want an iTunes for news? I prefer Google Reader, but others are just as happy with Bloglines. You can make it a page with Netvibes. If you want your content a little more filtered and mainstream, use My Yahoo or iGoogle, plus you'll get calendars and weather. All of these are free, for both producers and consumers.

Will any of this save newspapers (or news organizations that don't use paper)? Depends on how we use the tools that exist, or what new ones we invent, and what we do with the traffic that lands on their sites. But fantasies about micropayments and hand wringing about "giving away our content" won't fund serious journalism, either.

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