Four at night

1. Peter Y. Sussman at Huffington Post calls for a little perspective when it comes to the citizen-journalism project:

By all means, let's keep the citizens in citizen journalism. Let any interested reader find the raw data from hundreds of localities if they wish. But the measure of our success should be the perspective and understanding we provided for our readers, not how much data was accumulated by how many people or how much of it reverberated elsewhere in the national news echo chamber.

Huffington Post

2. Ken Doctor at Content Bridges considers the algorithms of the new Google News:

As print shrinks, Google will replace its daily functionality, its daily utility -- and it's been on that road for awhile -- with Google News, v2. It sounds like Google News, v1 meets Google IG meets AdWords for news, a new algorithm that knows us better than we know ourselves. Importantly ... Google is recognizing how fundamentally lazy we all are. In effect, we're taken to be the corpulent creatures in Wall E. Google seems to be saying: you don't have to do anything, we'll be your new paperboy.

Content Bridges

3. Jason Pontin at Technology Review proposes ways to save print journalism - starting with an assessment of print journalism's true value:

The comparative advantage of mainstream media is not the ownership of presses, but the collaboration of professionals. The creation of good journalism is a tremendously laborious process, requiring an infrastructure more expensive than any press. The illustration and design of stories has an infrastructure, too. Developing an audience that will attract particular advertisers requires another infrastructure. Selling advertising requires yet another. These structures, which allow publications to reach large, coherent audiences, can exist only within complex organizations, mostly businesses.

Technology Review via Newspaper Death Watch

4. Rob Fishman at Huffington Post reports on the words war between David Carr of the New York Times and Michael Wolff of Newser, and analyzes where they're getting their ammunition:

It's hip for bloggers to bite the hand that feeds them, and Wolff's got some oral fixation. It's not good enough for him to kick the Boston Globe or Seattle Post-Intelligencer while they're down; he needs to cite their own articles while he's doing it. We all have a personal stake in The New York Times, but for Wolff it's more than that, it's his bread and butter. Without the news, he's just an -er.

Huffington Post