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I have noticed a huge trend not only in websites moving away from RSS to Twitter and Facebook, but removing it completely! This is NOT a good move for people who provide content to stay in touch with consumers. RSS is a way to consume a LOT of information very quickly, and store it in nice categories if you miss it. I can catch up with a small blog’s output at the end of the week and, if I so choose, read every article easily in one sitting.

Small blogs cut their own throat by taking away the RSS capability. Social media outlets are information colanders: 5% of your followers will see anything you post, and that is probably only within 20 minutes of posting. That is the way it is, and it is going to only get worse. Apart from email lists, RSS is the best way you can collect stuff across the internet to read quickly, and I am so irritated when that choice is taken from me.

http://feliciaday.com/blog/rss-rant

A new report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) warned that the "independent watchdog function that the founding fathers envisioned for journalism" was at risk in local communities across the US. The report said there was a "shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting" that could lead to "more government waste, more local corruption," "less effective schools," and other problems. The 475-page report is the product of an 18-month effort to explore the turmoil sweeping the traditional media business in the US.

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"Diary" is a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of late war photographer Tim Hetherington's work. He made the film as an attempt to locate himself after ten years of reporting. It is a kaleidoscope of images that link our western reality to the seemingly distant worlds we see in the media.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Al Jazeera was gaining more prominence because it offered "real news" -- something she said American media were falling far short of doing. Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton said the US was losing the "information war." Other countries and global news outlets, she said, were making inroads into places like the Middle East more effectively than the United States. One of the reasons she cited for this was the quality of channels like Al Jazeera. The channel, she said, was "changing peoples' minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective." US news, she added, was not keeping up.

The Never-Betters believe that we are on the brink of a new utopia, where information will be free and democratic, news will be made from the bottom up, love will reign, and cookies will bake themselves.

The Better-Nevers think that we would have been better off if the whole thing had never happened, that the world that is coming to an end is superior to the one that is taking its place, and that books create private space for minds.

The Ever-Wasers insist that at any moment in modernity something like this is going on, and that a new way of organizing data and connecting users is always thrilling to some and chilling to others; that this is what makes it a modern moment.

In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of "scare quotes" to ensure that it is clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1/print

For companies whose core product is content, the idea we internet visionaries sold is a load of crap. We persuaded executives to compete with themselves online by setting up web sites that offered for free the same content their staffs labored so strenuously to produce and sell in their print publications. Companies were supposed make money by "monetizing the attention economy," or some other similarly vaporous concept.

Now the internet is pulverizing them. Following our lead, companies have now trained a generation of young people to never, ever, ever expect to pay for content on a laptop or desktop. But this is not quite the apocalypse. Many new digital platforms are brewing, and early on in the development of each one there will be a battle for the business model. Every new device is another chance to turn it all around.

The first decade of the web could come to be seen as a momentary aberration. So, media companies, on behalf of all misdirected internet visionaries, I am sorry. We like you -- we really do -- and we do not want a world without you. If you can hold on until we all have new kinds of screens, and new sets of expectations, you will be fine. You will be different, but fine. Just do not take my word for it this time. Ask around.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/234123

In the digital era, news has become omnipresent. Americans access it in multiple formats on multiple platforms on myriad devices. The days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone. Some 46% of Americans say they get news from four to six media platforms on a typical day. Just 7% get their news from a single media platform on a typical day.

The internet is at the center of how people’s relationship to news is changing. Six in ten Americans (59%) get news from a combination of online and offline sources, and the internet is now the third most popular news platform, behind local television news and national television news. In this new multi-platform media environment, people’s relationship to news is becoming portable, personalized, and participatory.

This report discusses two significant technological trends that have influences news consumption behavior: First, the advent of social media has helped the news become a social experience for consumers. People use social networking technology to filter, assess, and react to news. Second, mobile connectivity has turned news gathering and news awareness into an anytime, anywhere affair for avid news watchers.

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-News.aspx?r=1