Newsbreak vs. Google News

Steve Outing talks about the launch of Newsbreak, an Australian news aggregator from Fairfax Digital. The aggregator itself seems indistinguishable from many others, but what is interesting is that it comes from a traditional news organization, Fairfax Digital.

Steve says Newsbreak is a reaction to Google News and other online news aggregators. And he thinks this is a positive sign:

This continues the trend -- a good one, I think -- of traditional news organizations realizing that they can't continue to operate as islands on the Internet. Linking to other sources (even competitors, in many cases) serves the interests of readers, and establishes the news entity as a portal to the world of news, not just its own coverage. Such services give readers of a news brand less of a reason to turn to Google News, et al.

If only they would embrace the opportunity, traditional news organizations should be better positioned to innovate in online news than Google or Yahoo. Up to this point, innovation has been coming from elsewhere.