“same depth and vigor as did newspapers of yore — for example, homelessness, poverty, or other social ills”

Yes there are some great examples of this. But I don’t think it makes sense to apply this value to “newspapers” in general.

On the contrary, the deepest long term investigative reporting comes from partisans. The Obama team supplied great opposition research to the press. Facts and figures. Media Matters does consistent reporting on the “right wing” media an vica versa. The new value is to sift through the stuff and see which sotry makes more sense.

Before the mass market, journalism was about looking at the days events through a consistent well understood point of view. Perhaps in the coming days of massive collections of niche markets, the adverts and the news will be what “people like us” will find interesting.

Newspapers are famous for ignoring the wishes of advertisers. Or not, depending on the historical case and some combination of the morals and financial state of the publication. I don’t see how computerized ad auctions change this.

If journalists had invented keyword ad auctions I’m sure that Murdoch would be touting them as the Best. Thing. Evar. right now.

As to terrible masters: I hear the industrial revolution was unpleasant too.

(insert smiley for “wincing”)

“A machine makes a fine servant but a terrible master.” Well, the algorithm, combined with Google text ads, has become a pretty terrible master.

Jim, as for touting the nonprofit model, how many people will pay the tip jar? What is it with PBS and NPR, 5 percent of viewers/listeners, if that much?

What this statement misses is that the algorithms are not supplanting human judgement, they are designed to extend it. The ad space on a page containing a particular key word is valuable not because an abstract and arbitrary “algorithm” says it is, but because literally millions of advertisers have been competing in an auction to buy space on pages containing that keyword.

The algorithm is just a way of keeping track of the score, but the scores still come from humans.

Ultimately, what advertisers pay for is consumer attention. If you can reliably deliver that, you have an ad-based business. If your users would prefer to spend time on Facebook than interact with your news application, you do not.