---
title: "New York Times Starts a “What We’re Reading” Section"
date: 2009-07-17
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2009/07/17/new-york-times-starts-a-what-were-reading-section-look-familiar/
---
# New York Times Starts a “What We’re Reading” Section
The New York Times recently started a ["What We're Reading" feature](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/new-feature-on-bits-what-were-reading/?ref=technology) in their Technology section. In "What We're Reading, a group of technology columnists publish links to interesting articles they find online -- from any site on the web, not just the New York Times.

A couple of weeks ago I also started a ["What I'm Reading" section](https://idratherbewriting.com/category/what-i-am-reading/) on my blog, which feeds into the more collective [Writer River](http://writerriver.com), a group link blog. While collective link sharing is nothing new, it's an important way to sift through the millions of new posts each week on the web.

As I wrote in ["I need your human-aggregated content,"](https://idratherbewriting.com/2009/06/29/i-need-your-human-aggregated-content/) the only way we sort through the explosion of information is with human aggregation, meaning, people tag content worth reading and share it with others. The more people who sift through information and share the worthwhile articles, the more valuable online reading becomes -- because you can quickly find interesting, engaging material, rather than sorting through everything yourself. 

[Publish2](http://publish2.com) is the technology behind the collaborative link sharing tool used by the New York Times. Apparently it's a collaborative *journalist *tool, not a tool that non-journalists can use (at least from what I understand). It's too bad, because it would make a great replacement for Writer River.

One day I imagine there will be hundreds of tech comm readers using a tool like Publish2, marking and briefly commenting on articles they recommend. And in the sidebar of nearly every tech comm blog, you'll see a syndicated stream of the collective "What We're Reading" articles (similar to the [Writer River SpringWidget](http://www.springwidgets.com/widgets/view/23/?param_param=http%3A%2F%2Fpipes.yahoo.com%2Fpipes%2Fpipe.run%3F_id%3D0d634db660c583cf4cb0d4a1631c4953%26_render%3Drss&param_style_borderColor=0x000000&param_style_brandUrl=&param_compactView=false&param_blurbLen)).

With this model, a few good posts will quickly gain visibility. People will easily find them in the sea of information because the articles will float to the top. And when people realize the web has an abundance of engaging, niche content they can easily find online, web publishing will grow even stronger because authors will see it as a viable, respectable medium for their writing endeavors.