“Read Less, Know More” is the motto for the news aggregating website Newser. With these words, founder Michael Wolff’s website could be contributing to the “dumbing down” of America.

The Newser aggregating method is that of gathering news articles from mainstream news sites and reducing them to 65-120 words.  Various sites such as the Huffington Post, Spectra,  and 10X10 are also following this “quick read” format that is claimed to be the future of journalism. Meanwhile, Americans are missing out on vital information and Wolff may not be taking into consideration that he is encouraging that the nation become less knowledgeable for the sake of profit.

“I’m trying to put newspapers out of business. I mean literally,” said Wolf in an interview with CNBC.

While Newser summarizes content from traditional news sources, Wolff also admits his intentions of contributing to their demise at the same time. Here in lies another paradox.  Should the news sites like New York Times or Wall Street Journal no longer exist, there will be no foundation for Newser.  The aggregator would be no substantial information to aggregate from.

To make matters worse, in attempting to reshape the future of journalism, Wolff is  excluding the necessity of the Journalist.  Much like the Amazon’s Kindell and other electronic reading devices are making book printing obsolete, Newser and similar sites are increasing the number of unemployed journalist.

Wolff advocates “a world of bloggers” that leaves no place for professional educated journalists. Despite his background that is heavily drenched in writing and reporting, he seems to be lacking an understanding of what journalism is and should be.

While many are scrambling for a new business model to save the future of traditional news, it would be best that the ideas do more good than harm. The future can’t be too bright with nation of uninformed, “dumbed down” Americans.

All the victims were men in their early to mid-20s and walking alone. Each was confronted on foot from behind by at least four attackers, who were also men in their 20s. The victims were asked for their wallets and then savagely beaten in the head and face. Two of the victims were hospitalized.

The following maplink pinpoints the locations of muggings.  The red markers are indications of the linked muggings.  The yellow are those that are still under investigation for their connection with the muggings in red.  The blue marker is a robbery that police won’t discuss but could be connected to the others.

Click  this LINK to see a detailed quickmap of the Lincoln park muggings.