Jay Rosen might be a self-proclaimed introvert, but he had my rapt attention as I watched the TEDx talk he gave last month. Listening to the speech, which has just been posted to YouTube, Professor Rosen builds a picture of crowdsourcing that is so close to complete you can taste the open internet goodness. The 18 minutes are packed with all the clues necessary to create a perfect crowdsourcing strategy.

Prof. Rosen doesn’t actually give a bulleted list, but a collection of best practices seems to emerge from his examples. The underlying message, is that crowdsourcing is just a method of data collection. Expect results to be data, not an answer to your original problem.

Here’s my crack at sorting the speech into a coherent checklist:

Crowdsourcing Checklist Inspired by Jay Rosen

1. Open your data. If the data needs to be collected, expect to open source it as it’s gathered.
2. A community must have a common problem. The community doesn’t have to be geographic, but it helps.
3. Divide the problem into small, well defined, tasks that can be filled out on a form and done in minutes.
4. Publicize. Use an established platform to ask for help, and keep asking.
5. Have a timeline. Tweak as the presentation as necessary to meet the goal.
6. Continuously coalesce the data. The result is data. It needs to be compiled into a human-readable format. This should be an ongoing and public process to let the community know how close they are to reaching the goal.

Those are the lessons I gleaned from Prof Rosen’s talk. I plan on seeing how they fair against, projects like today’s SETI announcement that they would release their data to the public. It seems that their brute-force approach of creating one of the world’s largest super computers didn’t work out. They’re hoping that open sourcing the problem of literally finding signal in noise will find the extraterrestrial life for them.

SETI was originally following the checklist pretty well (they didn’t have a clear timeline, but it’s a little hard to blame them for that). It didn’t work out for them, we’ll see if this new approach – which seems to ignore the list  – is any more successful.

For all those asking, the answer is yes. I am willing to be the secretary of the Jay Rosen Fan Club. ;)

• Links for January 6th Through January 7th
• How Not to Do Newspaper Video
• BATTLE | Planning a Budget ‘New Media’ for Feature
• Steve to Craigslist: Open Up!
• Google Wave for Journalism, a #Hackshackers Event

I’m a news junkie. And I don’t do that Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson, or Paris Hilton crap either. I only do the hard stuff – elections, Iranian nuclear weapons, health care reform.

If you’re my kind of junkie, then NewsTrust’s new MyNews is a must have. I’m pretty much in love with the webapp, so what follows is a mixture of praise, reasons to use, and suggestions.

Aggregators to the rescue

There are too many niche and mainstream news sites to follow. While we all have our favorites, but it’s just not feasible to check only a few sites that are either too niche, too sparsely updated to warrant checking constantly, or so full of frequently updated content that you’re sure to miss something important. The natural solution is an aggregator, of which there are really two different types: those that collect content from everywhere and attempt to show you the best stuff (think: Google News), and curated aggregators that look at a ton of hand picked sources – including other aggregators – and only show you the best of the best (think: Memeorandum). The Google News variety of aggregator is great for diving deep into a particular topic. Put another way: they’re really good at search. However, they don’t do a good job of promoting the best stories and ensuring that nothing important gets past you. Curated aggregators pick up that slack, excelling at discovery and browsing. This is easy to see: Google News is great for research, but if you want to read the tech news of the day, you’re better off at Slashdot.

Why trust NewsTrust?

My preferred aggregator until two weeks ago was newser.com which I like for its UI. Newser showed me a wide variety of hard news in a format that was really easy to digest. And then MyNews, which I was beta testing at the time, became awesome. It has replaced Newser in a coveted spot in my bookmarks bar. (I still really like the UI of Newser, but content is king, and MyNews wins.) The idea that became MyNews has been around for at least a year that I’m aware of, and likely longer than that. While working for NewsTrust, I was a part of the internal testing process for SmartFeeds which has become the backend for MyNews. SmartFeeds is really nothing more than an automatically curated aggregator that collected stories based a complex editorial review of sources. Initially, SmartFeeds most practical application was pre-populating the NewsTrust review form with metadata because the algorithm wasn’t very good at predicting relevance. The implementation in MyNews shows a much evolved algorithm.

How MyNews Works

The reason MyNews is so cool, is that it takes the best features of the best aggregators, marinates, and serves with a side of quality. Think of it as:

• Editorial curated stream of stories (like Newser)
• Crowdsourced story gathering with a ranking system for quality (like Hacker News)
• Automated web scraping for the latest stories (like Memeorandum)
• Personalized rankings based on user preference (Google Reader‘s “Sort by Magic”)

MyNews decides what articles to serve up to you based on three categories:

1. Your social graph: Connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts and MyNews will pull in the links that your friends share. The algorithm doesn’t appear to rank these stories too highly though. NewsTrust seems to have made the conscious choice to rank the sources they know to trust higher. I think that is a mistake. If I take the time to link my accounts, I’d really like to see NewsTrust put a lot of weight behind what my friends say I should read.
2. Trusted sources: The whole point of NewsTrust is to determine which articles and news organizations are trustworthy. Based on the wisdom of the crowds and editorial review you’re nearly guaranteed to see only high quality stories.
3. Topics you’ve selected: one downside to MyNews is the effort it takes to setup. You don’t have to, but putting a bit of effort toward telling the system what you like to read and who you trust, will create a highly customized experience.

The Content

I only want to see info about politics, technology, and media. That’s all MyNews shows me. Tiger Woods is there because he’s talked about on my Twitter and Facebook accounts, but he’s buried – I rarely have to look at his headlines. MyNews has a heavy focus on Political news, with a bit of tech and media thrown in. That’s just how the algorithm is weighted. This is not for you if you like sports, entertainment, fashion, or local. Though it’s possible that in the future, NewsTrust will upgrade the algorithm to be able to deal with a wider variety of topics.

Trial Run

Last Sunday was a perfect storm for us news junkies.

1. It was a Sunday so the weekly editions with long form journalism were coming out.
2. The House was passing Health Care Reform and breaking news was coming in left and right.
3. HCR finally passing meant that there were many cool interactive graphics and longer articles that newsorgs had been sitting on were finally released.

Through all of this NewsTrust performed admirably. I constantly found great content at the top of my page and really enjoyed following the story throughout the day using MyNews as my only aggregator. Putting in the effort to setup MyNews turns NewsTrust into a niche, curated, aggregator that is best thought of as a combination of Memeorandum, Mediagazer, and Techmeme – only personalized.

Now I see…

The perfect news aggregator should keep a high signal to noise ratio. Show a wide enough variety to enable the user to discover new topics of interest, but rarely show irrelevant topics. For the longest time, NewsTrust has hovering between acting as an aggregator and a Digg-esque, social bookmarking, service. MyNews ties these two functions together very nicely and gives NewsTrust a solid purpose. All startups struggle to find the right way to present their idea. I’m fairly certain that NewsTrust has found theirs.

Disclosure: I worked NewsTrust, and left my internship in August 2009. I still converse with the folks there and think they’re a great team.

Thank you to Rachel Fus and Fabrice Florin for assisting with this post.

 

 

 

 

 

• Auto-Aggregation Needs Real-People Editors
• A Web Design Critique of Google News
• Joey Joining the NewsTrust Team
• Newsorgs Should Offer Freemium Live Interviews
• Connecting Another Dot(s)

—via Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web

Updated with a section re: workflow related to creating new waves and privacy one day after the original post.

Before I go any further – a sincere thank you to Google and the Google folks who were very gracious hosts. Providing a very comfortable meeting place, staying late to answer questions, let alone taking the time to talk with us at all is a step well above what most any other company is willing to do. It’s a brilliant feather in Google’s cap, and speaks well of their commitment to transparency and the Wave product.

‘Can we have an off-the-record conversation so the Wave won’t be in the caught in the Google cache?’

‘What does a Wave journalistic workflow look like?’

Hindsight

A Hole in the Wave Workflow: Copy to New Wave

The copy to new wave function.

Notes

• The pre-meetup wave. With polling data!
• The Google-created, post-meetup wave. With minutes!

• The reason given for Wave’s playback feature was to allow users first joining a complex Wave to catchup. This makes me realize – Waves shouldn’t be so complex that you need to catchup. Wikipedia, for example is always an organized page to look at – though it hides the discussion in a separate tab. What Wave needs to do is enable two views: one that presents the final product, and one that shows the inline discussion and misc blips.
• Twitter was the back channel, not wave.
• Google envisions wave as the single inbox
• Great point from Google folk about bots in Wave: they can be used to pull content in. This is a pretty good case for Waves being used as Topics.
• Rosy is  an extension being worked on for live translation.
• The solution to hiding your work is to create a new wave, but this seems non-embed friendly.
• Google will allow read only, anon, public, access
• The pitch to use wave as a conference back channel sounds identical to twitter – and almost a total failure to recognize that Twitter is being used for that already
• Basically all the use cases we’ve already heard presented: event planning, meeting notes, panel notes
• One hour, seven minutes into the talk we officially see some real journalism examples finally getting to real jour. examples
  • A magazine on wave – looks crappy, but does lead to a good question about Wave allowing customizable, and better looking waves (e.g. text-wrapped images) – and isn’t answered.
• Google folk sounding very zealot like, politically correct, with good PR, but almost… oblivious.

• Google Wave: The End of the Wild Web
• Links for January 16th Through January 19th
• Signed and Released: Side Projects Are So Good
• You’ve Noticed the ‘Links’
• They Do Care, Right?

Couldn't resist this photo of Prof. Rosen. Seemed apt.

The need to remain relevant

Objectivity means detachment

“This was a news story, an attempt to report what’s happening out there, as accurately and fairly as possible. Which is not the place for the author’s opinion.” Or: “I was trying to describe the Tea Party movement, and to understand it, which is hard enough; I’ll let others judge what to make of it.”

— The Quest for Innocence and the Loss of Reality in Political Journalism

Fear of Failure

Once, they feared the press

All this complaining…

• Abandon the view from nowhere. Embrace journalists as the experts they are. Capable of expressing not an opinion, but conclusions.
• Allow for the possibility that the world might be round. Failure is an option if its not a habit. Wrongness isn’t a sin if its admitted and corrected quickly.
• Abandon objectivity in favor of transparency. This is an old one now, but it’s a cultural shift as drastic as Jeff Jarvis’s turning off the presses for traditional institutions and therefore a tough pill to swallow.
• Get some cajones. If journalists realize that sources going direct has freed them of many of the traditional, menial tasks, of reporting, they can focus on the isn’t the right way to do business – that sources on the inside aren’t the only sources – they can release themselves of the need to remain ‘objective’ and avoid access lock-out. Rely on old fashion reporting instead of softball access.

Update

Prof. Rosen–Thank you for writing this piece. I’ve attempted an answer to your last question on my own blog as it got too long for the comments, but I wanted to respond to your example of tyranny.I’m a moderate, registered independent, voter. The Tea Party goes down in my book as great fodder for The Daily Show but not much else.That said, the word “tyranny” though a bit exaggerated, shouldn’t so quickly be belittled. I’ll point to the rise of presidential power which has only increased over the last 80 years, and the last two presidents have dramatically increased that power. One of the greatest examples of this expansion of power is the use of signing statements.President Bush issued more signing statements than any other president. In these statements he affirmed that he wouldn’t enforce certain portions of bills because he believed them to be unconstitutional. Now, President Obama has said that he won’t be issuing some signing statements at all if he’s previously spoken against the issue.Tyranny might be a strong word for that in todays politically correct society, but I think anyone would admit, there’s something not right with a President saying he can make, enforce, and decide the constitutionality of the laws – especially if he’s not even going to write it down for us. (For those not keeping track, The Constitution states that only Congress can make laws, the President is obligated to enforce them, and The Supreme Court is solely tasked with decided constitutionality.)Of course, this argument is really just a good example of why the claim should have been explored in the NYT. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t because sources are going direct, the Fourth Estate has lost its teeth, and Objectivity is killing good journalism.

• Apparently Reports, Editors and JUDGES Decide Newsworthiness
• Paid Content = Paid Wifi
• Links | “Journalists Are the Biggest Terrorists”
• Citizen Journalism, Brought to You by YouTube
• CBS Said to Consider Use of CNN in Reporting – New York Times

Apologize for your mistakes. Transparency is all it’s cracked up to be.

You admitted that journalists in this country had failed as the Fourth Estate. The flat-out bad reporting when ex-President Bush took this country to war against Iraq was in-excusable. The argument for war was based on lies. To this day, the media hasn’t made a resounding statement saying as much. You didn’t apologize. You blamed us, the people, for creating “conventional wisdom” for you to ‘float along’ with. If you want us to trust you, we’ve got to have an honest relationship! Tell us when you get something wrong. We’ll be mad, but we’ll trust you more because you came clean.

The smell of ink doesn’t justify its cost.

You said that print still has “a lot of life left in it.” I’m not sure if that was the diplomatic answer but I think most of us would have been more impressed to hear that you were actively looking for ways to move your operation digital; that print was on its way out as the foundation of your business. Make a commitment to doing journalism online because the myth that, “the best of online journalism is rooted in mainstream media,” won’t last long. I’m not sure what you define as “mainstream,” but you ought to consider re-evaluating your premise. The MSM isn’t the only group of people capable of doing journalism.

You’re not the last bastion of resistance. Stop resisting.

The Daily Show segment ‘End Times’ that made you look “faintly ridiculous” according to your wife should be the last time you try to look like an arrogant douche, not the last time you try to be a good sport! Let me give you a clue: depicting The New York Times as, “the last ship afloat, we [at the NYT] have all these lifeboats floating around underneath us and people dying to clamber aboard,” does not make it sound like you ‘get it.’ It sounds like you believe your own hype. There are plenty of other companies out there doing journalism. And frankly, some of us are pretty sure that your ship has been left behind. “The people who are eager to dance on the grave of the times and other major news organizations” aren’t eager, just willing. We wouldn’t “feel a profound sense of loss if suddenly there were no organizations that were sending reports to afghanistan or policing Wall Street or Washington,” because we’ll still have that. Journalism isn’t being threatened Mr. Keller. Just your business.

I do have a bureau in Iraq. You would too, if you were actually listening.

I’m totally lost on your obsession with foreign bureaus. Your report from the ground in Tehran, during the recent Iran elections was little more than a summary of events. There was nothing in that piece I couldn’t get elsewhere. Again: there was nothing in that piece I couldn’t get elsewhere. Please don’t insult my intelligence by saying that bureaus are necessary for reporting. The number of stories about Iraq as dropped off drastically in your paper. Having people on the ground there isn’t helping. If you’d drop your idiotic social media policy, you might be able to present new information, instead of simplistic anecdotes that I can just as easily find on twitter. Please don’t fail your job as a our watchdog again because you lacked a bureau. You may “think there is a little bit of a sense of war fatigue… while the country is going through a bit of a transition.” But, I think that sounds like you’re worried about selling papers. Trust me, every family with a solider over there grasps for any information they can get. You can’t stop being a public trust because its inconvenient for your private shareholders.

So… what’s the difference?

The Times had no problem leaking state secrets, claiming the truth required that they be published. Yet it had no qualms lying about the kidnapping of one of its reporters to protect his safety. What is the difference?

—Bob Dame, time.com

Yes, that’s an inflammatory question. But, I’d still like an answer. What is the difference? Not all of us are convinced that withholding information from the public is the journalistic thing to do. Please don’t skirt the question by saying that you save lives.

ALL Iranian journalists are being oppressed.

Yes, Iran’s policy toward journalists is “self-destructive.” Glad we agree. But, if you recall, Iran of all places, is a perfect example of Iran oppressing all journalists. We’ve proven that the random guy on the street with a cellphone camera can show live video to the world. That’s faster reporting than the New York Times has ever delivered. Let’s not just worry about Iran oppressing journalists. Let’s praise the Iranian people for picking up the slack.

Okay, so do we have a free press?

“Do you think there should always be freedom of the press?” is a bit of a weak question. But, telling us that libel laws mean we don’t have “absolute freedom of the press,” misses the point. Again, Mr. Keller, you’ve not answered the question. Yes, absolutes are impossible. Yes, the press is regulated, but jeebus man! How about a resounding, “YES! Journalism will always be here!” Is your faith that shaken?

Mr. Keller, answer the question please.

“One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises,” is not an answer to: “Do reporters avoid writing un-flattering things about sources?” It’s a cop-out. It’s avoiding the question. It’s horribly non-transparent. The sheer number of times you quote from a “high-ranking administration official,” in your paper is ludicrous. The answer you were looking for was a simple, “yes.” The correct answer ought to include phrases like “we’re a part of the community we report on,” and “people know they’re always on the record when they talk to us,” and “yes, it does happen, but only for really good reason.”

Sir, you’re right, objectivity is impossible. So stop trying!

It’s amazing the pains you go through to remove yourself from your own articles. Stop that. I have no problem with knowing that you were, ya’ know, actually there. I forgive you. Really. Stop worrying about The Gray Lady having a liberal tint. As you rightly imply, most of the folks calling you liberal likely think creationism is science. The rest of us are perfectly willing to accept you for doing a the best job you can. Be honest, and we’re willing to accept that you’re just as human as the rest of us.

Society’s relationship with journalism has changed.

“Quality journalism not the quite the same as info, it is in greater demand than it’s ever been and it’s in shorter supply than it’s ever been.”

—Bill Keller, time.com

I’m sorry, what!? Yes, information is in greater demand than ever before, and yes, journalism isn’t the same as pure information, but to argue that supply of either has gone down shows a level of ignorance I didn’t think possible for a man in your position. We have more of both than ever before. Don’t go insinuating that your poor newspaper is society’s last hope for useful information. That’s at best disingenuous, and at worst, wrong.

Mr. Keller, I’m calling you to account.

I tired of seeing an older generation of managers ruin this business for the rest of us. I’m not waiting to dance of the grave of the New York Times. I hope that the institution continues to exist for a long time to come. For that to happen, you’ve got to re-learn your entire industry. This is not the industry that you grew up with. We’re experiencing the greatest change to information distribution since the invention of the printing press 500 years ago. Your 40 years of experience are nearly irrelevant in this new business. Take the time to re-learn and re-think everything you thought you knew. ‘New media’ is a bit counter-intuitive. Take the time to think about the new rules of the road. And, perhaps consider a hiatus from giving interviews until you can be a good sport again. Your heartfelt supporter, —Joey Baker

I hit the publish button on this post knowing two things: 1) Interviews are damn hard. It’s near impossible for a journalist, who is used to asking the questions, give the right answers all the time. 2)I will never be asked to work for the New York Times.

Update: I’ve tweaked this post for typos and added a few links to provide more examples.

Update: Apparently, calling the NYT social media policy, “idiotic” might have been premature. According to Jacob Harris, the social media policy that Poynter reported is wrong. I’ve asked if the correct policy is public facing, and haven’t yet received a reply.

harrisj

(Jacob Harris)

@joeybaker One thing I will correct. The social media policy is not idiotic; you and Poynter are wrong on what the internal policy is.

On 13-7-2009 16:01:48 from Tweetie in reply to Joey Baker

• They Do Care, Right?
• Micropayments Lead to Piracy
• Some Photogs Can Write
• Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Did Happen to That War?
• How Newhouse Can Become Relevant Again

The Vancouver Project

Linked Photographer

• How Not to Do Newspaper Video
• CBS Journalist Freed in Iraqi Raid – New York Times
• ‘Olympicpix’
• Connecting Another Dot(s)
• ‘New Media’ Chaos

Mindmapping on a whiteboard

• You’ve Noticed the ‘Links’
• The News Business: Out of Print: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
• Newspapers Need a Platform
• How Newhouse Can Become Relevant Again
• In Civilization Again.

• LIVE | NPPA Photo Workshop
• Welcome Adorama! | Joe McNally’s Blog
• BATTLE | Planning a Budget ‘New Media’ for Feature
• BATTLE | What We Need, Is Infastructure
• BATTLE | What We Need, Is a Plan

My brother sent me an email tonight after he heard, Peter Fader speak. Fader is a professor at Wharton School of business at UPenn “doing datamining – they call it marketing.” Apparently, my brother found this talk inspiring, ending his first email in our resulting exchange with:

…he made some damn good points about the subscription model. b2c already is doing ok (campfire, github, etc.), it’s time for consumers to pony up. His bottom line: if facebook decided to charge you $10/month, you’d pay it. No questions asked.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, or know me, or have listened to some of the top minds in this ‘new media’ business, you’ll be pretty easily pick out how totally my brother has drunk the kool-aid of the bass-akwards mind fuck that the ‘old media’ folks try to sell you.

First there was the stone age

Deep breath. Let’s try to break this down: We are now in the information age. Where once the pinacle of technology was an iron sword, the new tech is information. Our economy is based on the trade of Intellectual Property. Yet paradoxically, the internet has made information practically infinite. Attempting to make money by controlling the amount of information is therefore doomed to fail. Put another way: controlling the scarcity of something that isn’t scarce can’t work.

History is not a good guide here: The internet is a fundamental shift from anything we’ve experienced before. It’s as revolutionary as the printing press and as radical as the written word.  It’s both asynchronous and instant two-way communication. There are however, fundamental laws. We just don’t know them all yet. The idea that you can delay, or should delay the transition to an internet based economy is just stupid. We’re here. Welcome to the future.

We depend on competition in our economy [fundamental law], which means that the first person to figure this out is going to make a boat load of money. Delaying will guarantee you’re not that person.

There are two camps out there: folks (who seem to be similar to Fader), who think that there is some way that we can charge users for content just because we’ve always done it (we haven’t). And folks (like myself), who are convinced that the internet is such a fundamental shift to the economy and information management, that charging for basic content is just asinine.

Napster

During our exchange, my brother offered this tidbit from Fader’s speach.

He was also an expert witness for Napster in ’03: “If the music industry had the option of turning back the clock, they’d just make Napster charge folks $15/month for crappy mp3′s and roll in the dough.”

That got me going. The music industry is a classic case-in point of the shear stupidity of trying to charge for content. But, on top of that, he has the gaul to suggest that charging for shitty service is a winning business model!? I’ll take that challenge on!

People used to pay for CDs. They did this because it was a) the only way to get music, and b) fairly cost effective. Then then the internet came. It allowed a) instant access to any music you wanted – no going to a store, b) only the music you wanted, you didn’t need all the other crappy tracks you’d never listen to, c) your music on your terms – making a mix tape was simple, d) way-the-fuck more cost effective because it was free, e) permanency that scratched or lost CDs didn’t offer. Even if you lost your harddrive, you could just go re-download what you wanted; if you didn’t have it all backed up on your iPod anyway. Summary: the web was a better user experience, and it was free.

What did the RIAA try to do? Tried to make abundancy scarce. Yeah… that worke

What the RIAA should have done, instead of suing all of the people that were saying, “we like your product so much, that we want to share it with everyone we know,” is figure out away to manage that abundance. If they had come up with a user friendly way that ensured high quality music that was easy to find (the two flaws of Napster) they could charge for that.

…oh wait, I just described iTunes – which is insanely successful on that model.

UI or Content. You can charge for one. (Journos need not apply)

The lesson: controlling access to content behind a paywall is not user friendly. In a world where users can be picky about … everything, it’s critical that you treat them right. This means both high quality content and a good UI to back it up. You need a minimum level of both, and then you can charge for one of the other.

iTunes put a great UI on the music downloading scene. Because of that, they can charge for access to content. Newspapers have neither a great UI or unique content. Fundamentally, journalism isn’t about creating unique information, it’s about compiling pre-existing information. This is a value-add that is important, but not so important that people will pay for it without a great UI attached.

Furthermore, “information wants to be free.” Or, the essential duty fulfilled by journalism dooms it to the realm of the necessary. The same realm of data that will find a way out to “be free.”

The only way that I can see out for journalism: have an amazing UI. Technology that is just becoming practical like geo-enabled data, the semantic web, crowdsourcing, rapid application development, unified user profiles, and machine readable data will enable journalists to present their craft in a user friendly, engaging, and informative way. We can charge for a great user experience. We can’t charge for information that they can get for free elsewhere.

Editor’s note: The above post is a rant, and should be taken with a grain of salt or a rum and coke. The author did.

Oh, and yes, I’m my own editor (probably not a good thing). :)

Update: Jay Rosen has come pretty close to listing the fundamental laws of ‘new media.’

• Micropayments Lead to Piracy
• Paid Content = Paid Wifi
• Rev2oh | Classifieds: Use a Tiered Selling Strategy
• Links for January 16th Through January 19th
• The Internet Broke the Economy

The News Ecosystem according to Steve Johnson. Click for a larger version.

Now there’s one objection to this ecosystems view of news that I take very seriously. It is far more complicated to navigate this new world than it is to sit down with your morning paper. There are vastly more options to choose from, and of course, there’s more noise now. For every Ars Technica there are a dozen lame rumor sites that just make things up with no accountability whatsoever.

Hypothesizing on the new newsflow

Licensed under Creative Commons. Click for a larger version.

Newsflow is complex, and not perfect

• Newspapers Should Repurpose Craigslist to Save Their Classifieds
• Facebook’s Problem Isn’t Privacy, It’s Lack of Initiative
• Why I Love MyNews From NewsTrust
• You Can’t Make Abundancy Scarce
• The Wall Street Journal Has Their iPhone App All Wrong