Content is coming from elsewhere...

Creating content now is most likely done like this:
Hire a few editors to handpick stuff already kicking around the internet.

Shift in purpose from producing original content to curating it is at an end of times for media as we've known it. We are now repackaging what's already out there.

Welcome to the era of the aggregator.

Time and attention have limits, but the universe of content, it seems, does not. So finding a way to quickly and cleanly deliver relevant news is important. The portals and blogs, in very different ways, introduced the role of sifting and collating. Then mainstream media started to figure it out as a way to add more eyeballs and improve their performance on search engines. And as aggregation and curation took a front seat, deep investments in news-gathering became few and far between.

Eleven of 24 major news sites linked to off-site stories, up from three the year before. Yet the focus of reporting narrowed because of the attrition of news-gathering resources. The other side of that coin is that more organizations are getting hip to the reality that they can't depend on being destinations, so they're adding to their websites features that facilitate sharing and aggregation in ways that often take the content and the reader off-site. In short, they're finding ways to make their product an easily transportable commodity.

The wealth of content on the web from both professionals and the legions of bloggers and other formerly-known-as-amateurs effectively is creating a golden age for content.

So how do you grab enough consumers' eyeballs to get advertisers interested? That's no mean feat when you consider the fragmentation on the web in general and, in specific, among the growing number of sites purporting to be the last word in telling you what you need to read. It's a universe of boundless competition.

Successful aggregators have largely come from
(1) enterprising individuals
(2) pioneering new concept
(3) [those who are] motivated by ownership of their project