The announcement of the Wall Street Journal Online's addition of a morning edition of its email summaries, edited by Joseph Schuman, the Brussels-based Journal staffer who introduced their Afternoon Report. It's nice to have a wrapup of the overnight news, and encouraging that the Journal is moving towards linking to other news sources, if but in a very modest manner. In the meantime, other news portals and search engine-driven news aggregators have been surging towards linking their content to any and all credible news sources and expanding the definitions of news credibility and editorial judgment. Nobody can fault the traditional expertise of the Journal's worldwide staff, but in an era in which audiences and technology as much as journalists determine news relevance, how much longer can news organizations operate profitably in the "walled garden" of their own exclusive and licensed content? Uniqueness in content is determined less and less by editorially-managed collections and more by the content itself and its assembly into a variety of flexible contexts, formats, communities and outlets that require more input than found in the typical news organization. Kudos to WSJ Online for another useful email edition, but we continue to look forward to leading news organizations to develop their core value propositions from the audience on in rather than the editorial staff on out.

On a secondary note, the links provided to set up this email newsletter were not working this morning from my WSJ Online account, a spokesperson at the Journal indicates that this is being addressed.