News-Record.com

Thank you, David Shaw. Shaw covers the media for the Los Angeles Times. In his column (registration required) yesterday he says this about online customized news reports:

"Great. Timesaving. Efficient. And I hate to sound like an apologist for the old-media folks who pay my salary. But one of the great ancillary benefits of the traditional daily newspaper is serendipity. You often come across something that you never thought would interest you but because it's there, right next to something that does interest you, you read it and maybe you learn something you would never have thought to ask about.

"I wish every provider of these customized news reports recognized the value of serendipity and breadth, as well as depth, of knowledge and force-fed users at least a few bits of unrequested, unrelated material that just might -- surprise -- prove to be of interest.

"Failing that, I wish everyone who relies on these customized reports for most or all of their news and information would, when filling out the list of what they want sent to their computers, check a couple of boxes for subjects way outside their normal range of interests."

This ability to pick-and-choose only that which interests you is dangerous to democracy, he says. "This is a time of rapidly burgeoning immigrant populations, each inevitably separated from the other -- and from the native-born population -- by language, culture, geography and the media they use. According to U.S. Census Bureau projections, minorities will account for more than a third of the U.S. population within six years -- and half of the population by midcentury. In such a multicultural society, more insulation and polarization are the last things we need."