Publishing dynamics evolve with tags and search results

Traditional print media mastered the art of providing information in an easily digestible format.  However, the speed of communication flow now renders the morning paper obsolete the moment it goes to the printer.

Similarly, the thoroughly edited news feature once gave us all the context we needed to fully grasp the significance or relevance of an event in time.  Again, the connected nature of information across the Internet now dynamically creates context and understanding far greater than any single standalone article can offer.

Context occurs when blogs link to each other and reference sources. Context occurs when you pull a list of articles on a given topic and choose which ones matter to you.  A snapshot in time on the Internet looks more like a reference list than a 1,000-word feature article.

The question I've been wrestling with is how to feed that dynamic as a publisher in a way that both serves people in need of information and advertisers who will pay to insert themselves into that communication flow.

The search engines offer an interesting solution to that problem.  Feedster and Technorati both return results from queries in RSS format which can then be used to create context on any given topic.  Amazon's A9 OpenSearch product performs a similar service, and the data set, in this case, comes directly out of publishers' records.  Using the result of those queries on your site will show your readers a more comprehensive resource list than simply posting raw data produced internally or edited news stories that want to be standalone events.

Delicious is taking this context a step further by giving publishers the tools to make connections in 2 directions.  1) Publishers can create context around their own internal content by pulling RSS feeds of content that share a common tag.  2) Publishers can then engage in the external dialog about a topic by connecting internal content and external content with the same tag.

Investigative journalism is more important than ever before, but investigating is no longer limited to journalists with special access to sources.  Reporting transparency becomes more and more important to readers as they begin to fact-check stories for the major media outlets.  Rather than stand alone in the ivory tower, publishers need to create open links amongst their readers and build context out of those links to tell stories that matter.

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