The IT Law Wiki
Register
Advertisement

Definition

A news aggregator is a website that takes information from multiple sources and displays it in a single place. News aggregators can be grouped into four categories: feed aggregators, specialty aggregators, user-curated aggregators, and blog aggregators.

Overview

News aggregators38 curate content from various news publishers, including local and digital- native newspapers; some aggregators also publish original content.39 Aggregators rely on online advertising and subscriptions for their revenue.40 They bundle articles and display them in a particular order, often using proprietary algorithms that weigh factors such as relevance, freshness, and authoritativeness of the content.41 Details about each aggregator’s ranking process, such as the weight given to each factor used to prioritize certain news articles, are not publicly available.

Some newspapers have attracted readers by working with aggregators, particularly popular ones.42 Limiting aggregators’ access to a newspaper’s content can reduce overall news consumption, including on the newspaper publisher’s own online platforms.43 However, aggregators can also make it difficult for newspaper publishers to create direct relationships with their readers, potentially resulting in newspapers having fewer subscribers and limited data about their readers.44 In addition, the visibility of each publisher’s content depends on the aggregator. Newspaper editors may have little or no control over the visibility of articles on an aggregator’s website,45 and may be tempted to focus on content that they expect to be ranked higher by aggregators’ algorithms in an attempt to obtain a more prominent position on aggregators’ platforms.46

Some aggregators have created sections dedicated to local news.47 One study found that after Google News was redesigned to place links to geo-targeted local news content on its Home Page, local news consumption among heavy Google News users rose by 25%, with no evidence that consumers were visiting Google News rather than directly visiting the publishers’ platforms.48However, some aggregators’ algorithms may give lower rankings to content from local newspapers than to content from national newspapers,49 displaying local newspapers’ content less prominently.

Specific terms of each publisher’s agreement with an aggregator typically are not publicly available. Although some aggregators provide information on the amount of revenue they provide publishers,50 oftentimes details about an agreement between a specific publisher and aggregator are available only from news articles by individuals familiar with the negotiations.51 Popular newspapers with a large customer base may be able to negotiate more favorable terms with aggregators and receive a larger share of revenue than smaller newspapers.

Some news aggregators may be able to leverage greater bargaining power over newspaper publishers through their parent company’s other products and services. For example, Microsoft integrates its news aggregator in its browsers,52 and Apple preinstalls Apple News on its mobile devices and tablets.53 Other firms operate news aggregators alongside online platforms that offer services that some newspaper publishers may rely on, such as search engines and advertising tools. News aggregators integrated with other platforms or devices may be convenient for some publishers and consumers, but they could also make it difficult for other news aggregators that do not operate similar access points to compete, increasing the market power of these integrated aggregators.

Source

  • "Definition" section: Kimberley Isbell & the Citizen Media Law Project, "The Rise of the News Aggregator: Legal Implications and Best Practices" 2 (2010) (full-text).

See also

Advertisement