We told you about this experiment at Slate a couple of days ago. The idea is to have one group of people limit themselves to the web and one group to limit themselves to newspapers. After a couple of days, who would feel better informed.

Here’s a case for newspapers from one of the participants I haven’t seen before, and it’s one that is definitely difficult for the web to match due to the number of choices available.

But even in our fractured media world, it still is satisfying to feel that you share with people you know a baseline of common information that comes from reading the newspaper—and, obviously, it doesn’t matter whether that paper is delivered to your door or downloaded on your Kindle.

Interesting take, but you could also flip it around and say that you could share a common baseline of non-information. And that is not good.Similar Posts:

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Slate is running an interesting experiment, although not exactly scientific. One group of readers will limit themselves to print media for a couple of days, and the second group will avoid newspapers and limit themselves to reading news on the web (no aggregation sites allowed). The idea is to try and figure out who is better informed after a couple of days.

This is pretty interesting. Does it make a difference that when you read a newspaper you are deciding to read and do nothing else? Is your attention span shorter when you are getting your news online and you have a hot game of Desktop Tower Defense on pause in the background?

Again, this is hardly scientific, but it’s interesting nonetheless. We may get an idea about the degree to which we can expect to be (mis)informed in the future if print goes away.

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Matthew Hindman contends that the web is actually consolidating news around just a few sources. Even though it’s easy for anyone to publish, users’ tendencies to click on one of the first few links returned by Google means that it’s becoming more and more difficult to attract readers. The numbers back up what he was saying.

Not only that, but people are paying more and more attention to national and international sources than local sources.

While much of their national and international content may be syndicated, papers like these provide regional and local coverage that the New York Times and Washington Post cannot. When Web users rely on hyperlinks, or they return time and again to a few widely-read sources, they receive little exposure to local news. To that extent, they disengage from the world around them and take in only the high-profile stories that national media see fit to produce.

There’s a little bit of an, “oh well, we’ve been defeated” tone to this article. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but I think there’s plenty of opportunity to be heard. At least your chances are better than they were when the only way you could have a voice was to own a printing press.

When all we had was print, radio and television, there was not long tail.

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Gary Kamiya argues that subsidizing the newspaper industry may be the only way to save the integrity of gritty news coverage. His opinion piece is at Salon.

But the real problem isn’t that newspapers may be doomed. I would be severely disheartened if I was forced to abandon my morning ritual of sitting on my deck with a coffee and the papers, but I would no doubt get used to burning out my retinas over the screen an hour earlier than usual. As Nation columnist Eric Alterman recently argued, the real problem isn’t the impending death of newspapers, but the impending death of news — at least news as we know it.

But the real problem isn’t that newspapers may be doomed. I would be severely disheartened if I was forced to abandon my morning ritual of sitting on my deck with a coffee and the papers, but I would no doubt get used to burning out my retinas over the screen an hour earlier than usual. As Nation columnist Eric Alterman recently argued, the real problem isn’t the impending death of newspapers, but the impending death of news — at least news as we know it.

I can’t help but think we are so enmeshed into content management these days that we aren’t thinking of original news. As Kamiya cites, there is honestly very little original material on powerhouse news blogs such as The Huffington Post or The Drudge Report. It’s basically more in line with mass content and link journalism. I’ve often wondered about both entities business model, their actual staff (I’m guessing it’s pretty much Matt Drudge but I honestly don’t know) and the payment structure for those journalists. I believe we as journalists are preparing for a freelance world.

But let’s walk out into the abyss for a moment, shall we? What would happen if the places that those links went out to started to dry up. Much of what is linked does start out in newsprint and then outsourced, for lack of a better term, to the web product in many cases. Politico does do original reporting as does TPM with Josh Marshall, but these items tend to lend themselves toward opinion and a biased political sway instead of just straight-on news reporting.

I don’t have the answer for you here, but I do know that we all are going to have to watch the trends, and we don’t need to discount newspaper’s relevance although the industry’s financial horizon is very grim right now.

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Here’s the rundown from several sites around on Facebook’s Terms of Use new policy.

A statement from Facebook. From Mark Zuckerberg.

A couple of weeks ago, we updated our terms of use to clarify a few points for our users. A number of people have raised questions about our changes, so I’d like to address those here. I’ll also take the opportunity to explain how we think about people’s information.

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.

One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.

In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.

CNET seems to support that history proves that Facebook won’t use photos and content:

Facebook has expressed disapproval when photographs and profile screenshots normally protected by the site’s login wall or privacy settings have been made public on the Web. The site reportedly threatened gossip blog mogul Nick Denton with an account deletion when one of his properties, Gawker, posted photographs found on a socialite’s Facebook profile. Suffice it to say it would be hypocritical for Facebook to publicly distribute, let alone sell, the same content itself.

Things are a little bit murky for sure, though. Unlike the Yahoo-owned Flickr, Facebook does not have extensive copyright preferences, meaning that a professional photographer might want to choose a media-sharing site where there’s less of a gray area as to what can actually happen down the road.

But as Facebook becomes more and more of a content-sharing hub, especially now that the Facebook Connect product expands its reach to third-party sites, it’s likely there will be a louder cry among members–especially those involved in creative industries who use their Facebook profiles for professional promotion or publicity–for clearer terms.

But I return to Mark Zuckerberg who says this:

We’re at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It’s difficult terrain to navigate and we’re going to make some missteps, but as the leading service for sharing information we take these issues and our responsibility to help resolve them very seriously. This is a big focus for us this year, and I’ll post some more thoughts on openness and these other issues soon.

I have to ask what the hell does that mean?

It’s complicated. That’s from TechCrunch:

Zuckerberg is saying, “Trust us.” But it is difficult to trust a company that is stripping users of rights they’ve become accustomed to, even if hardly any of them ever actually asserted those rights in practice. And the principle that you should be able to delete your data from the Facebook service is one that many would argue trumps the good that is done by letting Facebook keep it. If I upload a picture which I later regret uploading, why shouldn’t I be able to erase it from Facebook forever, even if some of my friends have already seen it? And should there be different rules for different media? Most people consider the messages in their inbox to be theirs, even if the sender wishes they’d never sent it? And as this data is shared beyond Facebook across the Web, who controls what becomes even harder to determine.

So, the issue is who controls what? And, yes, I guess it is complicated.

Apryl Duncan writes this about Virgin Mobile Austrailia:

That cute picture of your baby? It could end up in an ad campaign. You’ve given Facebook permission to do what it wants with the image by uploading it.

Think it can’t happen? Virgin Mobile Australia used a photo a user uploaded to Flickr to promote its free texting service.

A book without your name on it? Perhaps. From Katie Allison Granju

I can see it now: Facebook harvests hundreds of randomly entertaining “25 Things” lists written by users, and publishes a book…without paying the contributors a dime.

Frank Reed said the same thing we guys said here last night on NewsTechZilla:

So Facebook may or may not have pulled a fast one. You decide. Here’s the question though. With all of the online services that many readers use daily, from major to obscure ones, how many of you completely read the Terms of Service for everything? For that matter, how many of you look for revisions to these terms? If we are not paying attention are we opening ourselves to this kind of action that can put us at some risk? No matter how we view Facebook’s change it should serve as a warning to be careful where we sign on the dotted line.

It’s a sinkhole of high school drama and here is some advice if you don’t like it. The jury is still out for me, but I won’t be posting anymore photos or links to my various blogs there. From Tan.gy

That’s right. Either put up, or SHUT THE HELL UP AND QUIT CRYING ALREADY. When you’re ready to leave Facebook – as I did before this TOS shit was announced – you can make your departure by clicking this link:

I’VE GOT SOME BALLS AND I’M READY TO QUIT FACEBOOK. TAKE ME THERE!

Photo credit here

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Go read Jack Lail’s post on sending visitors away from your site.

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From John Robinson …

These are tough times for people trying to hold onto their jobs.

These are tough times, too, for businesses as customers keep a tight grip on their pocketbooks.

The newspaper isn’t immune to the economic downturn. When you make your living primarily from local advertising, you feel the pain.

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