What is news?

Interesting post over at OnlineSPIN on what constitutes news these days. News streams have been atomized to cater to thinner and thinner slices of our evaporating attention spans and the narrowing aperture of personalized interests.

We seem to be moving in a direction of only seeing the stories we've preselected for ourselves, are fed to us by a range of automated finders, or we trip over by virtue of offerings sent in from the frontiers of our own social graph. Not that customization and personalization are bad, they just thwart the act of random acquisition of news--to a degree. The eye falling upon an item of seemingly little interest, but great reward. Perhaps this is why I like reading the obituary column of the Economist. Week after week they profile people that I've never heard of but are incrediblyinteresting and important. I literally learn about them in passing (no pun intended).

I'm not sure where I'm going with this post, but it occurs that current measurement tools are evolving and playing catch-up to how people are actually receiving, interacting and redistributing content. It keeps the job interesting.