Web/Tech

Yikes. Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism is cutting staff positions and plans to gradually reduce enrollment "as the news industry retrenches."

Is this print's last gasp? Both the New York times and the Los Angeles Times have announced that meetings to pitch stories for Page 1 are a thing of the past:

In the aftermath of the Hillary email scandal, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham explains why he does not use email "to a baffled a press corps that walks around with smartphones welded to hands."

Following are the opening sentences of two sports stories. Can you tell which one was written by a human being and which was generated by a computer algorithm?

You can find whole lists of bad predictions. I love the tech-related ones in which people pretend they can figure out what innovations will last. There was, for example. IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, who said in 1943, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." And Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of the Digital Equipment Corp., in 1977: "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

I've mention here a time or two, in reaction to stories about the "death of print" or the "end of newspapers" that the problem is much, much deeper. What we are actually seeing is the demise of the whole mass-marketing phenomenon in which news can ride on the back of advertising. That end is almost upon us:

Remember the days when we simply could not not answer the telephone? If we didn't pick that thing up, who knew what important news we might be missing? Email is getting to be that way:

The future is here, and New York City is jumping into it:

A lot has been said (including here) about all we're gaining from the technological revolution in communications. But we're losing something, too, which is epitomized by Snapchat:

Boy, I certainly do wish him well:

Jeff Bezos wants to turn the Washington Post into a national publication, and he’s going to use his other company—Amazon.com (AMZN)—to help achieve that goal.