There’s been some excellent traffic and discussion on my last post regarding Singleton/AP and Google News. Much of that has been generated through social media (Twitter and links on other blogs), reinforcing a lesson I try to emphasize with my students: Think of social networks, not web sites, as your platform.

Anyhow, read the post and add to the discussion if you like.

I want to pull out one response I have to the comments though because it is pretty salient to the discussion. What happens if all these newspapers go away or put up walls around their content? Will people pay for it? Will the newspapers collapse and take democracy with it? Read more

Whether you’re a sports fan or not, chances are you at least saw a headline that New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez admitted today on ESPN that he used performance-enhancing drugs. This is the latest update in a story that started on Saturday, when Sports Illustrated broke the news using anonymous sources that A-Rod had tested positive for steroids back in 2003.

On the surface this is a classic news turf war. SI broke the story on Saturday and ESPN played catchup, but ESPN got the big snag today because this is the first time the story was relying on something other than off-the-record information. So, a classic news war at work. One-upsmanship at its finest.

The interesting subtext for me comes with the following question: how did you hear the news today? SI leveraged their status in Time Warner to break the story on several TW properties, including CNN.com. But when ESPN got the big “get” today, the first place I heard about it? . I subscribe to , and so the fact that I’m plugged into that feed all day via my Flock browser meant that’s how they captured my eyeballs. Read more