Rob Barrett, the longtime digital news executive, posts in the new eMedia Vitals site that news publishers have got to shed their anxiety about Google and learn to embrace the opportunities it provides.

People want to use search engines to find their content and it's incumbent on publishers to find ways to have their content found, Barrett says.

Regardless of concerns that Google makes money by supplying advertising adjacent to search results, he accepts that the benefits of the link economy outweigh any issues of Google benefiting. He rejects the notion of paywalls or other technological impediments for the audience to consume content.

The best response for publishers is to take advantage of Google "and take their content and advertising to where the largest audience lives," he argues.

It risks suggesting fandom to repeat most everything of what Jeff Jarvis creates on Buzzmachine, but his blog remains a leading-edge resource on thought leadership in the digital sphere.

His latest argument involves the case involving theflyonthewall.com and when information gathered by others can be legally redistributed --- the definition of "hot news" in U.S. terms.

Clearly much is at stake for sites that now build upon information gathered elsewhere, with several news organizations attempting to protect their reporting from repurpose. The case is particularly important in an age of technological capacity to scrape and redistribute content without human editing.

The case also tests an old concept in a new era and especially challenges the notion of how much value information has and for how long. Understandably, the largest companies have the most to lose in the legal tussle, as do those who have gathered content and seen it simply redistributed.

In Jarvis' view, the process and structure of news has changed to the point where such protection is no longer relevant. All news is hot news and freedom of speech requires the ability to rework it instantly without reprisal.

He sides with such companies as Google and Yahoo in the case in arguing that protection of such information is irrelevant and futile --- in other words, news cannot be defined by or bottled into a particular span of time. The question in the court, as Howard Weaver points out in a comment to this site, is what if anything should be done about consistent, systematic redistribution.

An international study released today suggests the Internet has become the major driver of decision-making among consumers and that its power isn't being taken advantage of adequately.

The Fleishman-Hillard report on digital influence surveyed countries representing nearly half of the online population and its findings point to some significant gaps and opportunities in the digital sphere.

Among them:

1. There is a funding gap. Companies aren't spending as much as they should on it to market.

2. The Internet is core to decision-making but not always treated as such by firms.

3. The oversharing of information is not only boring, the survey finds --- it's also a threat.

4. People will trust their friends online, but it helps if there are several of them asserting the same thing.

5. Sponsored bloggers aren't trusted and bloggers who can engage with companies trust those firms.

The report pays particular attention to the emerging China market, suggesting that the fastest-growing market is still in early adoption.

Eric Schmidt is not the first one to say it, but the Google CEO's view is meaningful when he pronounces the smartphone as the future --- indeed, the equivalent of the arrival of the television in terms of elevating the knowledge base of parts of the world.

Web search, smartphones and translation software are the keys to that knowledge-building, Schmidt says in an interview with The Guardian in advance of a speech he's delivering this week.

At the moment, he believes the best engineering work is being conducted on developing applications and systems to deliver content across mobile devices.

"That's a big news thing – that's equivalent to the arrival of television," he says.

It is a huge splash page, but MSNBC.com has redesigned to put almost all of its content there.

It is a distinctive approach. Where most others encourage --- and require --- click-throughs to launch photo galleries and most of the text content (to garner page views to serve up ad impressions), MSNBC.com has determined its strategy will be to focus heavily on the front page and to attract advertising and sponsorship support to it.

In other words, the site has gone retro, with few layers and much available on the spot.

There are easier search functions, plenty of large-format ads and a more prominent video player. But there are also some click-through functions, particularly to move content to social networks but also to generate a dashboard.

At a Newhouse School conference this week on emerging media business models, the director of the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project outlined the decade of change in consumption patterns and some implications for the business of media.

The portable, personal, participatory model of journalism means that social networks now take on a different role, argued Lee Rainie of the project. They become sentries, filters and distributors.

Consumers now are in charge of the news and want to participate in its generation, Rainie said.

There are plenty of paradoxes: More news, access, voices and engagement, but less time, knowledge application, diversity of brands and revenue.

And a lot of news is a commodity, something consumers avowedly will not buy, so media have to determine how to add value in the process to in turn determine what they might be able to sell.

The presentation is attached below.

A new report from Borrell Associates indicates the growth of social network marketing will be ferocious in the years ahead. The question: Will it be properly applied?

This year about 11% of marketing spending will go to social networks. Borrell predicts that number will grow to one-third of such spending by 2015, representing $38 billion.

And the ratio of promotional spending compared to advertising spending across social networks will increase --- from about 1:3 today to about 1.75:1 by 2015. In other words, $1.75 in promotion will be spent for every dollar in advertising across social networks within five years, Borrell suggests.

Borrell notes, though, that it's difficult to measure the scope and effectiveness of such spending, and that firms use their social networks as a mass medium instead of one that needs targeting.

Michele McLellan has compiled a reasonable view of 66 local U.S. news sites and determined that roughly half are profitable and many more optimistic of sustainable times ahead.

Naturally, it isn't surprising that organizations are optimistic --- it would be a surprise if they weren't --- but the survey indicates financial operations are profitable in about half of the cases the Reynolds Journalism Institute surveyed.

Moreover, profitability may be around the corner for many others, since the survey included many start-ups. One central concern: Balancing the effort to create content with the need to drive revenue. For smaller outfits, this is a difficult balancing act.

There are two surveys out that suggest a rearranged pecking order in online media trust.

One, from Harris Associates, suggests consumers are more trusting of branded news organizations that of portals. The trust extends through editorial and advertising content, says the survey for the Online Publishing Association.

The second, from Zogby Interactive, suggests that the technology heavyweights still hold reputational sway over the social networks in terms of consumer trust. Microsoft, Apple and Google have higher trust levels than Facebook and Twitter. John Zogby says the new firms don't have the brand equity yet. 

Without any really large story online --- yet --- there are several headlines worth discussing:

1. Facebook is going to launch location-based service soon. Loopt is also going to upgrade its location-based offerings to permit multitasking and location updating.The implications are significant for news organizations aiming to use Facebook for crowdsourcing and storytelling.
2. Apple has issued its new operating system for the iPhone, tailored for the iPhone4 but still applicable to iPhone3.
3. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and CNN writes on how non-profit organizations are filling some of the gaps left when newsrooms de-emphasize investigative work.
4. The New York Times announced former editor and publisher Arthur Brisbane as its new public editor. He succeeds Clark Hoyt. The implications of his appointment: As goes the Times in identifying standards for the craft, so can go the craft.