When a news feed no longer feeds news
It's hard to know what last week's Facebook announcements will mean to consumers of news. But, that's largely because Facebook isn't entirely clear where news content will emerge on users' news feeds. (Which now must be called something else.) For a few years, I've asked undergraduates where they get their news. The top response: from social media. (For a while, many said they got their news from Jon Stewart until he departed from The Daily Show faux news desk.) Now that's changing. Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told consumers that the social medium's algorithm would now serve up "friends and family"-generated content ahead of news stories from publishers. The goal, he suggested, is more meaningful interactions -- and, by omission, fewer firestorms erupting from fake news generated by purveyors of pretend news. Why change? Zuckerberg wants no more to do with a cascade of political propagandists. The angry disputes they gen