👓 Slate’s Today’s Papers invented aggregation journalism. | Slate

Read Today’s Papers: Slate’s First Hit Feature Invented the Modern Web, Kind Of (Slate Magazine)

Its name suggests a slower-moving past, when much still depended on the morning thump of fresh-printed broadsheets landing on doorsteps. Its concept presaged a lightning-quick future, when much of what we read is attitude-laced summary of someone else’s work. It was Slate’s first smash-hit feature and, for better or worse, its most influential. “Today’s Papers,” says Michael Kinsley, Slate’s founding editor, “deserves some tiny bit of credit for the ruination of journalism.”

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

That enterprising writer could read the papers the moment they went online in the wee hours, summarize their lead stories and other juicy pieces, and post this briefing on Slate before the paperboys could toss physical copies onto driveways in Middle America’s cul-de-sacs. ❧

For me, it wasn’t so much the summary, but who was it that had the best coverage. It was the comparison of the coverage. I read most of the particular stories anyway.
October 22, 2018 at 09:28PM

The Today’s Papers job was first offered to Matt Drudge, ❧

October 22, 2018 at 09:29PM

Anyone can open up Twitter and instantly know what the world is gabbing about from minute to minute, all day long, across thousands of electronic sources that are instantly available all over the globe. ❧

But we don’t get the journalistic criticism of the coverage, who’s doing it better, who’s more thorough, etc. We’re still missing that.
October 22, 2018 at 09:32PM