Planet Abell

J eff Jarvis asks a provocative question (imagine the odds): What will the "distributed university look like?" Start here: Why should my son or daughter have to pick a single college and with it only the teachers and courses offered there? Online, they should be able to take most any course anywhere. Indeed, schools from MIT to Stanford are now offering their curricula the internet. Similarly, why should a professor pick just from the students accepted at his or her school? Online, the best can pick from the best, cutting out the middleman of university admissions. Looking way out into the future (but, hey, Sam Zell is saying that nupes will be OK — in 30 years! ), I wonder if we are rubbing up against forces that will expose the limitations of the free market as it relates to supply. If aggregators become the dominant publishers but do not participate in news gathering, what happens to reporting? If it is a practical truth that any movie or book can be obtained easily and...

J eff Jarvis makes note of the new AOL news , now in beta, which takes on a blog format. Not a big deal, he says. Not news. "Can we stipulate that the blog tool is just a publishing too and it's not news when somebody uses it," he says. Before we get too excited, or not excited enough, remember that the purpose of a news site is to inform, not to make sure we all get along or participate in some kind of social experiment about equality. Seconds before this writing AOL News fills its page with the news — from just after midnight, though updated 20 minutes ago — that Paris Hilton has been released from jail. It assures me about the importance of this event by placing it under a banner that says: “Top Stories Right Now” (I digress, but isn’t the “Right Now” part redundant, This is news, and it isn’t good a little shout of unneeded emphasis that tries to convince me of something we both know isn’t true?) And yes, I see on AOL the tiny list of “latest headlines” to the right ...

UC Berkely journalism professor Neil Henry opines in the San Francisco Chronicle about the Chron's decision to cut 100 newsroom jobs and suggests that Google and Yahoo should do something to subsidize journalism since they benefit so greatly from it: "It stands to reason that Google and corporations like it, who indirectly benefit so enormously from the expensive labor of journalists, should begin to take on greater civic responsibility for journalism's plight. Is it possible for Google to somehow engage and support the traditional news industry and important local newspapers more fully, for example, to become a vital part of possible solutions to this crisis instead of a part of the problem? "Is it not possible for Google and other information corporations to offer more direct support to schools of journalism to help ensure that this craft's values and skills are passed on to the next generation? "Is it not possible for these flourishing corporations ...

I 'm not in the habit of commenting there and publishing here (it really should be one or the other, shouldn't it?), but Jeff Jarvis struck a nerve over at The Buzz Machine with his call for comments on why anyone should be optimistic about the future of news in a post headlined " Nabobs of negativism v. cock-eyed optimists" . In the interest of full disclosure: I am. Here's what I wrote over there: The good news is great news: there is no evidence that the public interest in news has waned. We just don’t know exactly what people I feel like a kid in a candy store most days, free to be disloyal or to ignore, to find out what’s happening on my terms. Or to skip a day or two and catch up later. are doing or like – and maybe they don’t either since the volume of choice -- in content and means of consumption -- can tend to breed fickleness. The theorists call this " fragmentation ." I feel like a kid in a candy store most days, free to be disloyal or to ign...