A new online newspaper venture, Tewspaper, has been launched with automatic aggregation replacing the need for journalists. The sites use an algorithm to search and aggregate news from social media sites to create websites relevant to five US cities (though the site itself claims to cover 10), according to a press release.
The service uses publicly available APIs to find text updates and match images to stories for Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York City.
“We began by limiting the news to trusted authorities on Twitter. From there, we are working on an algorithm that can find additional breaking news from anyone on Twitter and other websites as it happens,” said Jared Lamb, the creator of Tewspaper, in the release.
The sites currently look pretty basic, but add an RSS feed and this could be a handy tool for journalists in these areas wanting to track news in real-time.
There’s also an attempt at a Digg-style user-rating system, perhaps similar to plans for the blogpaper, though this isn’t yet explained on the site.