'The Daily Me,' editor not included

December is a month filled with holidaze, year-end roundups -- and a time to gaze into the crystal ball. Not surprising, then, that we'd have a handful of articles in different media outlets about the future of journalism in the digital age. If there's a common thread to these stories, it's the idea that the Internet will bring more power to individuals, and lessen the power of big publishers, editors, and advertisers. While that sounds nice in an ideal, utopian, flowers-in-our-hair world, the reality is that Big Money will do its best to follow the Big Ideas if they catch on. Here's my quick take on these technological innovations, along with the inevitable upsides and downsides.

The personalized newspaper

The Press Gazette (UK) reports that Elcorsy Technology is developing a digital newspaper printing press that could create "a stream of entirely different newspapers throughout the duration of any printing run." This would enable the publisher to target certain demographics with ads and perhaps let users decide what content to see on a daily basis -- a "Daily Me." Journalists might end up on "content teams," targeted to certain readers.

Upside: People get exactly what they want from their paper, and don't have to throw out the Food and Home sections every week.

Downside: The Gazette says the digital print times are probably too slow for daily production. Plus, the idea of advertisers micro-targeting a tiny, perfect demographic has failed miserably on the Net so far. Who would pay good money to reach the only three Doberman-owning, Porsche-driving, blue-haired old ladies in existence?

The end of mass media and moguls

Guy Kewney writes in the Independent that the notion of "a publication" might become obsolete in the information age. He opines that "technology is going to make it easier to assemble your newspaper from multiple sources [there it is again!], or plan a video viewing sequence that is unpredictable. The mass market may soon be impossible to locate." Kewney says the tech industry is a forerunner for the rest of us, and that the current method of some podunk weblog being picked up by Slashdot or the Register, then being hit with a "smart mob" of huge traffic, could translate to other media. His future is of "opinion formers" -- and not journalists -- who could cash in when their Web sites are smart-mobbed and advertisers are smart enough to offer up big bandwidth and ads right on the spot.

Upside: According to Kewney, power will pass from big publishers and moguls to "advertising franchise brokers," eliminating mass media as we know it.

Downside: Without mass media, we'll be getting our big stories from random sources -- and who would know what the big story is, unless you read the right weblog at the right moment.

Coordinated cross-media content

Poynter's Barb Palser writes in the American Journalism Review that multitasking media consumers will not bring about the death of TV. Her example is the supposed nightmare for TV execs, as a TV show promotes a Web site, taking the viewer away from the boob tube and into the never-ending hyperlinks of the Net. But Palser thinks that the future could bring cross-media content that could "engage people in new, deeper ways," with a better coordinated TV/Web, radio/Web or newspaper/Web partnership that assumes the viewer is multitasking. She concludes that "instead of a half-attentive viewer, he'd be a fully involved one."

Upside: Less rivalry at media companies between the dominant newsroom in Old Media and the maligned kid-sister New Media division (MSNBC.com excepted).

Downside: We all will be forced to multitask if we want to get the whole story.

Automated editors

Finally, ex-Slate editor Michael Kinsley jumps on the Google News bandwagon, writing in Slate about the power of the automated editors of the future. "People still do it better," he says. "But not by much. The day is clearly approaching when editors can be replaced by computers." Why have we as journalists resisted the notion that editors could be replaced by machines just as factory workers have for so many years? Because it's us. His futurizing then bogs down into a series of farcical complaints. Some bad jokes ensue about the computer's conflict of interest, the Department of Homeland Security and guests on cable-TV talk shows. No wonder he expects to be replaced. (Didn't Slate already do that?)

Upside: No more human editors cutting out my best jokes.

Downside: Computers would cut out my best jokes.

Quotable

"I don't think hip, cool people buy from HSN [Home Shopping Network]. Our show is for hip, cool people, not stay-at-home moms."

-- Scott Blum, the brash young founder of Buy.com, who told The New York Times about his plan for BuyTV, a late-night talk show crossed with an infomercial. A Forrester analyst put it best in the Times story: "Television is expensive. With Buy.com's margins, he can't afford it."