Outsource the specific, not the general

Last week, we heard about more newspapers turning their backs on the main historical source of outsourced general news, with the New Jersey Star-Ledger going to print wit no AP content at all and Tim Burden pointing out the many problems with the AP model in the digital age. This week the outsourced news news is all about BreakingViews, the Lex-alumni finance and markets column now picked up by NYT and the Telegraph. What does this - and the Wall Street Journal's apparent plan to set up Heard on the Street as a competing markets commentary wire to BreakingViews - tell us? That there's a market for maybe half a dozen finance and markets columns and everyone who's serious about their content in this space will duly move to provide it as a wire; that every newspaper really doesn't need its own trivial variation on the same content but will ultimately pick one or perhaps two of these central ones; and it tells me that SeekingAlpha seems to be missing a big trick in not moving to offer a finance and markets wire to mainstream news media, because it has some of the best original content in this space and could own it.