Hearst Launches Semi-Automated News Aggregator

By Andrew Gauthier 

Techcrunch


The problem with magazines is that they are so very expensive to produce. All those writers, editors, photographers, and designers cost money. Even original news sites require a lot of resources to run. That is why Hearst is taking a different approach with a new site launching today called LMK (Let Me Know). It brings in a river of news and photos on 2.3 million people and topics from authoritative sources. In other words, Hearst is getting into the news aggregation game, but with its own high-design twist.

Each page, whether it’s about a celebrity, athlete, or company, pulls in news feeds and photos from the AP and Getty about that topic. LMK is licensing semantic filtering technology from Evri, which parses through the feeds and photos to help create the automated topic pages.

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But LMK will also have specially curated pages which will have its own freelance editor and designers. The first enhanced topic page it will be launching is for U.S. college football. Bob Roe, a former assistant managing editor at Sports Illustrated, is the sports expert who will be overseeing the sports pages. Once the best sources for stories about each team, player, and coach are selected from both major news sites to fan blogs, Evri’s technology does the rest. More…

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