Giving a whole new meaning to the term 'news cycle'

Matthew Ingram, the Globe and Mail's technology writer and regular blogger on the subject, notes that the New York Times -- which always prided itself on producing most of its own content -- has converted to an "aggregator". Through the acquisition of BlogRunner.com, it acquired a system that allows its technology section to search out and republish related stories from around the world. There is a suggestion elsewhere that the Times is extending the practice to other areas of the paper. Ingram suggests that, since newspapers have always in a sense been aggregators, this is a natural and logical extension.

However, what are the implications for creation of original content when everyone, including even the good, gray lady, is cycling through, distilling and repackaging information from elsewhere? Can content management and creators rights survive in such an environment? At some point, we have always believed, somebody, somewhere has to do the original research, ask the hard question, conceive of the very idea behind stories, and somebody else had to pay for it.

A lot of what is recycled and aggregated in this manner is not earth shattering or crucial, of course, and in a sense this very blog is an aggregation of information about the Canadian magazine industry, so I'm not one to talk. But what about when misinformation becomes conventional wisdom as it is spread through the aggregation cycle and what about deliberate misinformation being spread for nefarious or self-serving purposes? Will there be any checks or balances? Of course, the Times says that this is a human-machine interface and the judgement of the Times editors remains paramount.

An analogy might be the hydrologic cycle, in which that glass of water you drink this morning at one time probably passed through somebody else's kidneys. Is information like this, neither created, nor destroyed, but constantly transformed? Is there a certain proportion of original information required to replace information and viewpoints that degrade?