New media professor Benjamin Davis, a news veteran in broadcasting and digital media, suggests it's time for journalists to consider the digital media pyramid.

Journalists already know about the inverted pyramid, with the most important content first, the second-most-important content next, and so on.

But Davis posts in the Online Journalism Review suggests an adjustment is in order. It would identify the new qualities of digital journalism and itemize the supporting material that it carries with it.

Once the five Ws --- the who, what, where, when and why --- are out of the way, Davis suggests journalists next focus on the underlying legal permissions (cut and paste limits, copyright), then art and ads, then opposing links to "balance" content presented.

It's an interesting formula, not without its debatable points, but worthy of a discussion.

A new report suggests journalists are adopting and adapting to social media in encouraging ways, using networks and distributing content across channels as never before.

The Society of New Communications Research report, authored by senior fellow Don Middleberg, indicates consumption of social media has grown significantly in the last year.

Some 70 per cent of those surveyed use social media sites, 48 per cent are using Twitter, two-thirds are reading blogs and one-quarter are listening to podcasts.

More important, perhaps, is the acknowledgment journalists now make of social media. Of those surveyed, 80 per cent believed that blogs were shaping public opinion and 91 per cent felt new media were improving journalism to some extent.

"They understand the future of journalism to be a highly participatory, collaborative and dynamic process," said SNRC president Jen McClure.

A 52-country survey of 27,000 online users by Nielsen suggests nearly half would consider paying for news delivered digitally.

But there are several catches: If people already pay for it in print, they want it free online. If a Web site charges, a large number would stop using it. If they buy it, they feel free to share it.

About half of those who would pay would prefer micropayment systems, while more than four in 10 say an easy payment system would be more enticing.

And nearly two-thirds feel that, once they've paid, the content ought to be ad-free.

Martin Langeveld, the industry veteran and contributor to the Nieman Journalism Lab site, has an extensive post on how publishers can best embrace the imminent iPad from Apple.

He argues that mobile technology is going to be ubiquitous and that publishers ought to array their resources around several approaches.

Apart from some obvious directives --- array resources, create content and embrace the iPad --- Langeveld suggests publishers work with Apple to enable advertising personalization. 

He also believes new relationships with marketers need to be created to facilitate transactions.

A few weeks ago, Google announced a partnership with The New York Times and Washington Post on a storytelling format called Living Stories.

It sought to place all of the available content in one URL for updates. As technology, it offers readers a more accessible format to stay abreast of developments and peruse background.

Today it opened the source code for other entities to work with. After the criticism of last week's Google Buzz introduction, this is likely to be better received in journalism.

The information landscape has changed, so what does that mean for journalism and its consumption? Brian Solis, the principal of the Futureworks media agency, sets out in an essay for paidContent to answer some of those questions. He gets some distance on the matter.

Solis asserts that journalism now is at the mercy of the human network that forms an information system. The time between an event and collective awareness is shrinking, and with it comes an enormous challenge for journalism to balance speed and accuracy While journalism offers unparalleled traits, it often lumbers into place.

Media now have to compete in the attention economy, he writes, and the future of media is rooted in engagement. For that reason, media need social seismologists to understand their impact.

"As a new hybrid of collaborative journalism takes shape, reporters who remain plugged-in to communities outside of their domain will open new doors to relevance – connecting to stories and people that propel information beyond the reach of any one network at the speed of the now web," he writes.

The scholarly resource Oxford Analytica has examined the impact of blogs on the media landscape and concluded they will fill important gaps but not kill the traditional business.

That's a simplification of the elaborate, clearly constructed analysis by Oxford of the contribution blogs are making to media. Among other things it says blogs:

- Media are becoming more collaborative, transparent and participatory.
- Blogs are compelling businesses to be more responsive and open.
- Traditional media are trawling blogs for tips and leads on stories they no longer can easily cover.

While the recession and transformation of media are creating seismic shifts of retrenchment and consolidation, Oxford concludes traditional media will find itself back at the heart of the more diverse business. 

To date the conventional wisdom has been that Apple's impending iPad tablet could revive the audience for print-driven journalism. The assumption: A bigger audience will naturally yield better economic metrics.

But the general manager of the not-for-profit investigative journalism foundation, ProPublica, begs to differ. Richard Tofel argues that the iPad could kill the newspaper because digital revenue will not suffice in propelling journalism.

Even if circulation and subscription revenue can be supplanted by the iPad's arrival, digital advertising is lagging seriously behind print advertising and may never catch up. If this is so, the iPad could hasten a newspaper's decline.

For the iPad to be the newspaper's saving platform, digital advertising would need to be three to five times more costly --- a rate that seems utterly impossible to contemplate, Tofel argues.

In the first few days upon its release, Google's entry into social media has been taking it in the chin. Buzz has been lambasted mainly for its privacy follies --- it pretty much corrals your friends the second you're inside the tent --- but critics like Jeff Jarvis also cite its basic functionality.

Late Saturday Google made some key modifications and pleas for tolerance. Its official Gmail blog says users now will merely have a suggested list of followers; those who tripped into a big network will get a second chance to build a leaner one.

Picasa and Google Reader albums won't automatically be mixed in with Buzz, and you'll be able to hide Buzz or never use it because a tab is being introduced in Gmail.

"We quickly realized that we didn't get everything quite right. We're very sorry for the concern we've caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We'll continue to do so," author Todd Jackson writes

The Nieman Journalism Lab posts an extensive, interesting piece today on the anticipated move this coming week in Iceland to become a beacon for press freedom.

The country plans legislation to permit greater freedom of expression, access to information, protection from source-identification, and strengthening of libel shields.

If the package passes --- and that's a big if, considering the tenuous quality of the national government --- it would make Iceland the equivalent of the Cayman Islands business holding.