NP: The Mars Volta, The Bedlam In Goliath

On the heels of that flood insurance post, I've been meaning to mention the Discovery News blog since I heard about it.

I like that they're stepping up to fill a perceived need, and it seems of a piece with this notion of content separating from the delivery of that content, which seems to be where all this is ultimately headed -- newspapers and magazines as aggregators and curators of content from a sort of "salad bar" of third parties.

Obviously, there's a risk of a sort of monopoly effect -- a single source on certain niche topics could stifle views or interpretations that differ from that source. Then again, if there's a single source that is perceived as too ideological, this model may reduce barriers to entry so that there's a true "marketplace of ideas." The aggregators will almost certainly be more ideological -- or, rather, the aggregators may be ideological if they choose, but will only flourish if there's an audience for that ideology.

Then again, a lot of this hinges on the notion that even news reporting is biased, and/or that the line between news and opinion has been irrevocably blurred. I'm not quite convinced that those two problems can't be solved.