Last month 538’s Nate Silver took Vox to task for its aggregation of maps and charts on social media. Which prompted a long response from Ezra Klein about how Vox approaches aggregation. I mention this here because every local newsroom I talk with has struggled with how best to aggregate and also with the frustrations of having their stories unfairly ripped-off. Klein’s post raises some useful questions for thinking about your own aggregation practices, and Audrey Watters adds to the discussion on her blog. One measure of “ethical aggregation,” she argues, is whether it adds or extracts value from the ecosystem. Capital New York reports that the New York Times’ front page aggregation experiment has been a “resounding success.” Becoming a trust hub for links to your own stories as well as the best of the web is bringing readers back and bringing in ad revenue. In the past, Nieman Lab profiled how the Atlantic and the Washington Post have approached big aggregation projects. There are lots of good ideas in those posts.

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