Apple's recent acquisition of Siri, a voice-activated iPhone application, leads Jemima Kiss of The Guardian to speculate that the company is aiming for small-scale, voice-commanded devices in the near future.

As she sees it, a voice-activated  phone could shed the screen and place the technology in a device smaller than an iPod Shuffle, with commands unfettered by menus.

As she notes, though, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has repeatedly denied his company is moving into the search engine business, which a device as she describes surely comprises. Mobile, though, is the next major scramble.

The future of journalism is a much-discussed topic, but last week's gathering at the Googleplex of some 80 thought-leaders in the field seems to have made for a much-better-than-typical session.

J.D. Lasica, the prominent social media leader, summarized six points from the Techdirt Saves Journalism gathering as keys to successful journalism organizations:

1. Mine data for opportunities. Really look at numbers and trends in the business.
2. Elevate your writers.
3. Create a platform for your community.
4. Expand revenue streams.
5. Branch out into different communications purposes.
6. Stay open to the changed definition of news.

Lasica's sober assessment: "In the end, what was left unsaid was the reality that making a living as a journalist is about to get a lot harder, and that the news business is already being bifurcated into a shrinking elite of professional journalists alongside a burgeoning ecosystem of bloggers, hobbyists and amateurs who write and report for very different reasons."

Public access to government information in Canada is defined by the laws at a federal, provincial and municipal level that assert public rights to disclosure. There are many exceptions to these rights and, more than three decades into the laws, there are few legal precedents to clarify the degree of rights.

For journalists, these laws fuel conduct in the field. They guide the degree to which journalists can claim records should be publicly disclosed. Canada's laws are largely considered outmoded in an era of greater pressure for institutional electronic release of records.

This week the Supreme Court of Canada declined to pronounce freedom of information as a constitutional right. Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin and Justice Rosalie Abella wrote in their decision that there is no "general right" to access to information.

The ruling does leave open the possibility to strengthen rights, though. It said future appeals might be able to argue that certain suppression of information constitutes an abrogation of free speech rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Last fall Google floated the notion of Newspass, a publishing system that would enable e-commerce and also permit content to be searchable even when inside a paywall. It brought the idea to a gathering of publishers at a Newspaper Association of America meeting.

Now details are starting to emerge on the proposal, which appears headed to market by the end of the year.

The Italian newspaper, La Republicca, delved into the idea today. Google so far is simply saying it doesn't comment on prospective products, but its comments to paidContent.UK didn't dampen the report's contents, either.

Essentially Newspass will permit publishers to create a payment system, either through micropayments or direct credit-card purchases, through its Checkout system.

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt has repeatedly expressed concern about the news business' economic model in the digital sphere. While Google drives traffic to sites, and also benefits from search of those sites with its adjacent advertising, it sees a higher purpose in technological support of the news business --- the content is essential to Google's well-being.

Mark Berkey-Gerard teaches journalism at Rowan University in New Jersey and he maintains a very clearly written blog with a batch of online tutorials and tips.

His latest post itemizes many of the conventional myths worth confronting in the classroom as professors work with students to enter the craft of journalism. In brief, they include:

1. Lecturing is no way to have a conversation.
2. Follow those you like on Twitter to gain resources and insight.
3. Don't assume the digital natives are active.
4. Don't skimp on HTML and CSS assignments.
5. Review raw interview tape.
6. Online tutorials need to be followed up.
7. Experiment first, be an expert later.
8. The audience is an excellent editor.
9. Let students pursue passions first in their creation.
10. Push beyond what you know.
11. Expect convergence to be resisted.
12. Storytelling is hard.
13. Students don't remember PowerPoint, so provide it.

The former editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Jack Fuller, has thrown a new challenge to journalists in the 21st century: Understand the mind of the audience in a scientific sense.

Since he's left the craft to write books, Fuller has spent some time studying neuroscience and the ways in which the brain is stimulated --- by information, among other things. His essay for Nieman Reports, a small detour from his latest book on news, implores journalists to learn more about brain function.

After all, he notes, the audience is now going to control the news business. Even though many journalists shy away from feeding the more impulsive elements of the audience, the truth is hard to ignore: People want certain things.

"So the choice is not between giving people what they want or what they need. The challenge is to induce people to want what they need," Fuller writes.

Journalism needs not only to adhere to its standards but develop a new rhetoric, he proposes.

"Serious journalists must understand to the very essence the minds that make up this audience in order to know how to persuade people to assimilate the significant and demand the accurate. Anything less is the neglect of our most important social responsibility," he concludes.

There is more to journalism than pushing a Publish button. That's the headline.

There is a bias to the Internet for amateurs and immediacy. That's the essay.

Nieman Reports' latest issue examines current and prospective digital news matters, and the Douglas Rushkoff essay was the first of several to draw my attention. He argues that the craft of journalism is suffering at the hands of technological access. Technological revolutionaries mistakenly confuse access with skill.

"Just because a kid now enjoys the typing skill and distribution network once exclusive to a professional journalist doesn’t mean he knows how to research, report or write. It’s as if a teenager who has played Guitar Hero got his hands on a real Stratocaster—and thinks he’s ready for an arena show," he writes.

Rushkoff notes that many of the same companies criticized for corporate media are making money off the free writing on the Web. Value is being extracted, just not at the same place.

"Worst of all, those of us still in a position to say something about any of this are labeled elitists or Luddites—as if we are the ones attempting to repress the natural evolution of culture. Rather, it’s the same old spectacle working its magic through a now-decentralized media space. The results—ignorance, anger, and anti-elitism—are the same.

In an age of abundance and aggregation, the premise that content is king is no longer king.

Instead, the notion holds that curators --- those who find, sort, endorse and share --- hold the keys to the kingdom. So says Steve Rosenbaum, the CEO of Magnify.net, in a post for Silicon Valley Insider.

"We've arrived in a world where everyone is a content creator," he writes. "And quality is determined by context."

A context or curation king is going to be strong in an age of an aggregated economy, Rosenbaum suggests.

The annual media and entertainment report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers reveals more interesting dynamics in media consumption and revenue, principally in the growth of digital and in particular mobile.

In the U.S., the Internet will overtake newspapers as the second-largest advertising medium by 2014. In Canada, the media market itself will grow about 5% annually in the next five years, spurred by mobile.

Latin American, Asian and European markets will grow most rapidly, while North American markets will grow relatively slowly --- at a clip of about 3.9%. Overall the rate of growth is forecast at 4.2%, meaning global advertising of $498 billion U.S. by 2014. Interestingly, only the Internet and television will feature spending of more than $100 million on their media.

"Consumers are embracing new media experiences with staggering speed. The advancing digital transformation is driving audience fragmentation to a level not previously seen. However, the current wave of change is of a different magnitude from previous ones both in its speed and its simultaneous impact across all segments," PwC said in its release.

The report identifies three key trends:

1. The rising power of mobility. "The ability to consume and interact with content anywhere, anytime—and to share and discuss that content experience with other people via social networks—will become an increasingly integral part of people’s lives."

2. The increasing dominance of the Internet over all content consumption. "Using the Internet is now one of the great unifying experiences of the current era for consumers everywhere—and their expectation of Internet-style interactivity and access to content will continue to expand across media consumption in every segment."

3. The increasing readiness to pay for high-quality content. "Consumers are more willing to pay for content when accompanied by convenience and flexibility in usage, personalisation , and/or a differentiated experience that cannot be created elsewhere. Local relevance will also become important once again as an aspect of convenience and relevance."

Veteran digital media thought-leader Dan Gillmor has a new column for Salon and he's putting down interesting markers in his first efforts. His latest post argues exhaustively (one hopes he's being paid by the word) against tax subsidies for journalists and their work.

Instead, he sees an analogy to the early days of publishing support and the need to subsidize the infrastructure that delivers the digital equivalent of the mail. Open broadband would open the business,  

With such support, Gillmor argues, "entrepreneurs would almost certainly come up with the journalism, including a variety of business models to augment or replace today's, that would provide the public good we all agree comes with journalism and other trustworthy information."

Gillmor believes the newspaper industry, with a few exceptions, deserves to die and certainly doesn't deserve to be propped.

"Let's create the conditions that help ensure a market of ideas and business models, based on one of the principle America stood on in its early days: widespread contributions and access to knowledge, as a foundation of the future," he writes.