Where Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us fall short

You have to put things into perspective here. These three sites are relatively new compared to older news organizations. The older groups are well established and have a strong foothold in the business of finding and reporting the news. I believe that these sites may someday come to be great news sources themselves one day. It would be nice if these sites did more collaboration with the established news sites instead of both sides having an "us vs. them" mentality.

But what do I know? I consider news to be entertainment.

Hi Justin,

I think you're misrepresenting things a bit. Digg and reddit are very different sites -- the report you're citing also states that these were reddit's top 3 stories:

"In terms of specific stories, Reddit focused most heavily on domestic terrorism (7%)... the Vice President Cheney controversy (4%), Supreme Court actions (3%)."

Geez, none of those sound too unreasonable. But then again, it'd be a much less interesting (and less self-fulfilling) read, wouldn't it?

You ought to read this, too
http://reddit.blogspot.com/2007/09/project-for-excellence-in-journalism_12.html

best,
MARK

"...often little in the way of follow-up..."

Follow-up seems pretty random in the mainstream media as well. Some stories they'll pound into the ground, others (smaller-seeming stories perhaps?) they'll start pounding but they'll never tell you the finish (especially when the finish is months later...) To be honest, though, I see this problem more often in the national media of my country than in those of the US.

"...user-news sites focused more on domestic events and less on news from abroad than the mainstream media that week"

But sites like CNN also barely focus on news from abroad compared to the massive amount of American (national and local)news. Moreso, their foreign correspondence occasionally has, uh, little booboos. Fairly recent example: "The new Belgian prime minister Guy Leterme..." Really? I bet a lot of Belgians were surprised when they read that.

It's still fairly logical that they focus on US news, though, because they are after all a US news site. Same with user-driven sites, if most of the users and the audience are American, you'll get more American news.