NYT: A Newspaper That Gets It

In the scheme of things, Blogrunner isn’t going to blow you away but it is perhaps another sign that the New York Times gets the Web as well as any newspaper.

Blogrunner is a Techmeme-like news aggregator that the NYT acquired in 2005. It’s been resurrected as a way to aggregate NYT stories AND other Web sites and blogs. What I particularly like about Blogrunner is it shows the NYT isn’t afraid of giving people information choices, and sending them to other Web sites. At the end of the day, Blogrunner will succeed if it becomes a useful service and, in the process, puts the profile on the NYT and its content.

In contrast, many newspapers are afraid of letting people access all of their content, although the walled garden is disappearing. As well, newspapers are terrified of driving readers to other sites on the assumption there’s no value in making it easy for people to know about other information sources. This explains why most newspaper blogs are useless even if they’re well written.

TechCrunch describes Blogrunner as “Techmeme for a mainstream audience” , while Read/WriteWeb calls it a “great move” and wonders if people will use the NYT’s tech front page more often.

Technorati Tags: New York Tiems, Techmeme