The New York Times launched a new aggregation feature on its homepage, indicating that The Grey Lady is willing to admit she’s not the only news that’s fit to print. “Watching” is a Twitter-like feed that includes news from sources like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Reuters and the Associated Press, as well as headlines, multimedia and tweets from around the Web.For digital news consumers who prefer visiting a media organization’s website to a Twitter feed, Watching is a great compromise. It allows digital readers the ability to stay on top of breaking news while remaining loyal to their preferred news source, The New York Times.New York Times editor-at-large Marcus Mabry told Nieman Lab in a Sept. 23 article that the paper is trying to find better ways to deliver developing stories to readers.”I think it’s a huge service to offer readers the best of the rest,” Mabry says. “We feel our web experience on The New York Times homepage is second to none. At the same time, it is not all the information you need as a well informed reader today. To pretend that is silly.”By sharing a portion of the spotlight with other media organizations, the Times can better serve its readers, and keep them coming back to their site, whether through NYTimes.com or its mobile app. And as we all know, engagement is a critical part of any retention marketing program.Watching joins a series of tools offered by the Times in recent years to convert readers to subscribers, giving them a reason to visit the homepage often and to read its proprietary stories. With so many news organizations competing to be the first to break a story, it is smart of the Times to admit to its readers that it can’t always be first and to adapt to its subscribers’ changing needs.