JWT Launches Old-School 'Information Portal'

Apparently believing employees aren't intelligent to find their own industry news sources and laughably calling it "first of its kind," JWT has partnered with Nielsen to create JWT NewsWatch, a customizable "information portal" which will pull news from 40 sites including AdWeek, BrandWeek, MediaWeek, Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter. Obviously they haven't heard of the countless other news aggregation services (NewsPage, anyone?) that have been around since the birth of the Internet or RSS readers which are free and are comfortable paying InfoDesk what is likely to be a hefty fee for creating/managing this service.

Oh but wait. While it's really easy to create topic-specific OPML files that could be shared by the entire agency and/or clients with a free, web-based newsreader like Bloglines, Google Reader or Rojo, those services won't be able to be JWT/Nielsen branded. And, after, that's what's really important. Not the actual information delivered.

But...people are lazy. They need this stuff neatly packaged with a nice bow on top. After all, that's what we tell our clients all the time. Keep it simple stupid. And, let's be honest, this helps JWT look good in front of their clients. It's one of the beloved "bells and whistles agencies love to offer. So we'll just shut up now and et JWT bask in their coolness over this.