The Associated Press has sent new signals in recent days of its intention to protect its content and deal harshly with those who use it extensively. It has proposed a news registry to tag and track its content as it's being used, with the intention of working through arrangements with users to pay for that content.

Setting aside the technical questions about such an approach --- most bloggers and aggregators find it simple to cut and paste content in such a way as to bypass something like AP is proposing --- the larger question of the inherent approach has touched off some extreme criticism of the venerable news agency.

Jeff Jarvis, one of the more notable critics of AP's approach in recent months, is arguing that the assets inside the Internet offer more than AP could --- thus, individuals and organizations should mass and replace it.

In Techdirt, Mike Masnick implies (but doesn't provide clear sourcing) that insiders are critical of AP's approach. He is suggesting Reuters step in and pick up the ball. It should encourage bloggers to link to them instead, he argues.

The New York Review of Books is publishing a series of essays from the respected journalist Michael Massing. The first is a thoughtfully researched look at the evolution of the blog in the context of news and information provided through the Internet.

Massing takes on the criticism the Internet is a form of parasite on legacy media.

"Without the vital news-gathering performed by established institutions, many Web sites would sputter and die. In their sweep and scorn, however, such statements seem as outdated as they are defensive.

"Over the past few months alone, a remarkable amount of original, exciting, and creative (if also chaotic and maddening) material has appeared on the Internet. The practice of journalism, far from being leeched by the Web, is being reinvented there, with a variety of fascinating experiments in the gathering, presentation, and delivery of news. And unless the editors and executives at our top papers begin to take note, they will hasten their own demise."

Massing examines the impact of many individuals and organizations, and he concludes the lowering of barriers of entry to newcomers has yielded a fresh wave of voices and approaches. What he isn't clear about, though, is how the expense of journalism is going to be met in this new environment.

"Needless to say, traditional news organizations continue to play a critical part in keeping the public informed. But can they adapt to the rapidly changing news environment? And who is going to pay for quality news and information in the future?"

For the answer to that, we await his next instalment in the series.

This week Slate.com has taken four people and asked two only to read a paper and two only to surf the Web (but not newspaper sites) in order to stimulate a discussion on who comes away better informed and more frustrated.

The results have been pouring in for a few days --- more than a dozen posts from the writers at this counting --- and the extensive writing is a good illumination on the emotional ties to newspapers, the excitement about the Web, and the concerns about each in terms of satisfying the content and esthetic requirements.

It has been an interesting (if unscientific) exercise. The edge went clearly to the Web, but not without lots of asterisks.

It will come as little surprise that polls find people don't typically embrace advertising commingled with the content they crave. But a new Harris Interactive poll has some disquieting findings for Internet advertisers and sites that carry them: People don't like the formats,  even if the ads themselves aren't bothersome.

The mouse-over, pop-up and difficult-to-close ads rank very low with a majority of those polled. Still, the industry intends greater use of online in the time ahead, so Harris concludes a possible backlash is brewing.

It suggests firms invest in finding more engaging ways to reach consumers.

In his Content Bridges blog, industry veteran Ken Doctor notes the return to profitability for many newspaper firms in the United States. A good thing, he says, but not time to return to business as usual.

Instead, Doctor counsels an assessment of the damage through cost-cutting and a realization that stabilization came with some impact on the product. He's hinting at reinvestment needs and certainly he's steering companies from diversions like competing with Craiglist or constructing paid-content models.

"Mostly, publishers must focus on the digital world as it is, 2010 around the corner. Digital as in laptop/desktop + mobile, with TV/monitor usage coming not far down the line," he writes.

"That means content -- high-end pro to smart user-gen -- and sales, reoriented for the local merchants' needs coming out of the recession. It's content and sales, sales and content well into the future, maybe built on a more solid foundation, maybe a real bottom.

Dave Winer, online guru and the real founder of RSS, writes that constructing a paywall for content is no solution to what ails the news business.

"As a user of news, I'm sure the future is in shortening the distance between the sources and the readers," he writes. "The idea of putting up a paywall will just force more reporters outside of it if they want to do their jobs and shrink the publications further. It's no solution."

His principal point: "With all due respect, putting up a 'pay wall' is exactly what these organizations don't need. They need to decentralize, get further out into the world, not hole-up behind a wall and try to tough it out."

There is another take on the pay-versus-free online news debate from Jeff Sonderman in NewsFuturist: Essentially he says news hasn't been sold at its cost since the emergence of the penny press.

He asserts that the arrival of the penny press, and the concurrent arrival of advertising to subsidize the content, has meant marginal-cost pricing in the digital sphere makes it nearly impossible to charge.

What is marginal-cost pricing? "The price of a product in a competitive market falls to the marginal cost of creating and delivering one more unit."

In digital terms, that's nearly zero.

"Those who ignore the rule of marginal-cost pricing and try to charge users for content in a competitive market will be undercut by more efficient competitors who stick with free. They'll also face an endless fight against piracy, because economics says the product should be free and technology makes it easy to duplicate and spread."

Can some charge? Yes, he says, but only those with unique content. Otherwise others will undercut with similar content.

If digital advertising is dramatically lower-priced than legacy advertising in reaching an individual, then it only makes sense to wring any costs associated with advertising out of the system. One such cost is building ads with creative departments or agencies.

The New York Times' blog, The Local, has been rolling out some interesting new features, most recently enabling users to volunteer to cover events or to request coverage from journalists.

Now it has introduced a low-cost self-serve advertising service. At five dollars per 1,000 page views, it is priced quite cheaply. The aim is to make it affordable for local retailers and services to reach audiences.

Newspaper alumnus and digital-age consultant Steve Yelvington adds his voice to last week's essay on journalistic upheaval by Clay Shirky (and the response by Philip Meyer).

In Yelvington's view, there's a lot of hyperbole out there about the death of newspapers. Most remain profitable, if not at their earlier levels, and they stand to be around for a long time.

He argues newspaper companies had many opportunities to invest properly in their future well-being and didn't.  But that doesn't mean it's game-over.

"How long and how well newspapers and professional journalists persist in our future will be determined in part by how well they identify new ways to play socially valuable roles. As journalists, we must adapt to a world where we share information power with activists, businesses, and the people formerly known as the audience," he writes.

AdAge says the VMS agency has quantified the media buzz --- essentially the public relations buzz --- on Twitter and determined that the attendant publicity totallled some $48 million in the last month.

"Twitter received almost 3 billion impressions -- 2.73 billion, to be exact -- in the past month, a time period that doesn't even include the frenzied weeks in April in which Oprah and Ellen weighed in on the micro-blogging service," AdAge says.

"TV contributed to 57% of the PR value, newspapers 37% and magazines 5," it reports.