Yahoo Media Chief Jimmy Pitaro Talks About the Upshot of Content's Future

Whilst in Santa Monica, Calif., this week, BoomTown stopped in at the YahooPlex for a quick chat with the Internet giant’s Jimmy Pitaro, who is VP of media.

The focus was a high-profile blog called The Upshot, Yahoo’s effort to delve deeper into the new push to determine content selections based on search.

While some consider such efforts as a “democratizing” of the news, others are more concerned about relying on algorithms to determine the best coverage and the implications for a society guided by its own searches.

That has not stopped the trend from growing, with companies such as Demand Media using freelancers to create millions of articles. Yahoo recently bought a competitor, Associated Content, to jump into the game.

The Upshot is a little different, essentially using analysis of popular search words or topics to inform the news staff.

Articles are then produced for the Yahoo blog based on this audience data, on a wider range of coverage than the more typical how-to articles produced using this method.

In this video, Pitaro dismissed worries that Yahoo (YHOO) coverage would be guided solely by a formula for user-driven, advertiser-coddling, money-making-only content, but it is clear the idea of using search as an editorial tool is the wave of the future as far as Yahoo is concerned.

Here’s the interview: