In a move that aims to better recreate the experience of browsing through a print publication, Google Labs has introduced a new tool named Fast Flip.

Wired editor Chris Anderson recently told a German newspaper that he used Twitter to help him navigate the news rather than looking at sources. The point he made is an evolution of his media consumption habits that he discussed back in 2005.

People are sharing bit.ly briefened links to video taken and uploaded minutes before and other protesters in Tehran hold their phones up high to record and share their activity with Iran and the outside world.
The developments in the use of the web to share, access, edit and discuss information about the crisis in Iran show just how modern news organizations are failing to deliver news in the way the public want to seek it.
Iranians and observers abroad are using right this minute Twitter, blogs, Flickr and YouTube to share information about what is happening within Iran at a speed that [...]

Online Journalism Blog’s Paul Bradshaw has written a primer on how the internet has irrevocably changed the way news does business, and why any newspaper that hopes to survive needs to understand—and take advantage of—the new economics of journalism.
Among all of the 12 factors Bradshaw enumerates (ranging from the atomisation of news content to the rise of PR firms), the common theme is the diminishing power of print media in the face of emergent online entities. Where a newspaper once held a monopoly over classified ads, now stands Craigslist; where a newspaper once dominated arts criticism, now users turn to [...]

Keith Hopper has created an interesting web service called NPR Backstory, that browses Google Hot Trends for popular topics, uses NPR’s API to search it’s archives for related stories, then posts it’s finds automatically to a Twitter account. Though it does not work perfectly yet, it looks like a great tool to re-purpose old news, and flesh out the history of the buzzing news of the day.
[NPR Backstory via Christian Science Monitor]

Google News Timeline is a new feature on Google Labs that offers search results chronologically, displayed on a graphical timeline. Users can search through stories published in magazines, newspapers, blogs, on certain days and related to specific topics or search terms. Results show up on a slideable, zoomable horizontal timeline, so you can read in order of occurence and or/mention. With Google News Timeline, searchers see headlines as more than just singular articles – but rather longer, richer stories that continue on with updates, corrections, and follow-ups over time.
Google News Timeline

Are your Google Alerts a little too subtle? Is Tweet Deck and your RSS feed not keeping you in the loop in a timely fashion? Then you may want to upgrade to a news alert system you’re not going to miss, like an 85 dB smoke alarm.
Jer Thorp has hacked together a smoke alarm hooked up to the news feed from the New York Times NewsWire API. If a pre-determined word or phrase comes through the service, the alarm will let out a screaming alarm, letting you know hot information is coming down the line. The “NewsAlarm” is also thankfully [...]

A low tech approach to news broadcasting is working well for Alfred Sirleaf. He runs a a news and information service called the “Daily News” on the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia, Liberia. The simple news display consists of a few large blackboards surrounded by some ad space. Sirleaf started the news service as a way to get important news and information into the hands of people who can not afford (or even understand) newspapers. He claims to have 10,000 daily viewers, and runs the whole operation through his cell phone, aided by a group [...]

“Paper is dying, but it’s just a device.” So says Nick Bilton, editor in the New York Times research and development lab. Bilton talked with Wired about what he sees as the future of news delivery, and paper, in his view,  is not going to go away, but it will play a smaller role in how we take in news. One way paper may survive, is as output from “newspaper boxes” that print out a personalized paper with embedded QR and sms codes for each article, that will lead to more in-depth digital coverage.
Beyond hard copies, Bilton is working on  [...]

The New York Times has branched out into the “hyperlocal” news market with two new websites that cover very small, specific areas. Launched last week, The Local is a simple, blog-like repository of local news and events. The Local acts as a kind of digital, small town newspaper that filters out all the national and international news to only deliver what’s relevant to your corner of the world.
At the moment, The Local is being field-tested in two areas, Maplewood, Milburn and South Orange, New Jersey and in the Fort Greene-Clinton hill area of Brooklyn. They each have small staffs, and [...]

Interesting bit of news that exposes the kind of archaic thinking that’s helping contribute to the downfall of “traditional” media. A federal judge ruled that the Associated Press can sue All Headline News for stealing “hot news”. The AP claims that AHN is copying the AP’s headlines and news verbatim, without paying a syndication fee, and then reselling the news without any notice of where it came from. Which is wrong, of course. But what’s notable is that the Associated Press is basing its case on a 90 year old precedent that defines scoops as property, which is absolutely laughable [...]

During NYC’s Social Media Week, we had the opportunity to sit in on “Launching a media brand from scratch: A short history of The Daily Beast”, a panel in which The Daily Beast discussed how the relatively new site was able to rise to prominence in several months.
The general consensus was that their success resulted from the prolific propagation of their content. While it’s easy to spam the world to let them know what you’re writing about, it’s more efficient to engage other blogs and publications on a personal level. The idea is that tailoring which articles to share with [...]

National Public Radio is offering their audience an extra level of functionality by providing a tool that allows user to create personalized podcast feeds that can be uploaded to any mobile device.  This new feature enables listeners to enter their various interests, ranging from general topics like music and politics to more specific subjects like The Beatles and Barack Obama, into search fields that then find and aggregate the clips in one location.  Although relatively easy to use, those seeking the most tailored content will have to spend a little time experimenting with the technology to discover the best mix.
Besides [...]

Jason Calacanis, CEO of blog network Weblogs.inc, has been wondering who the hell has been spending so much time contributing to Digg.