Whether you're a journalist or a consumer of journalism, you already know that people get their news differently today than they did a decade ago. But a new study from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism documents--to sometimes breathtaking effect--just how much the internet has transformed the media landscape.

If you're looking for an overview of the troubled roll-out of Google's Buzz--the new social-networking site that could, potentially, be an alternative to Facebook and Twitter--this piece, from the NY Times's Miguel Helft, is a worthwhile read. Here's the bottom line: Google screwed up, big time, by automatically pushing people into networks rather than letting users take the first step.

In this week's paper, I write that David Rohde--the New York Times reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban, and whose abudction was subsequently kept quiet by the Times, Wikipedia and others--still seemed, during a recent lecture at Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, to be wrestling with the ethical implications of his case.

Globe arts editor and Phoenix alum Scott Heller will be leaving the paper for the New York Times at the end of this month. The memo sent last week by Globe editor Marty Baron and features editor Doug Most follows; Baron tells me they'll be naming Heller's replacement "in the next few weeks."

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To all:

We are sad to report that we will be losing one of our most creative

Read it for free while you can, because the New York Times Co. today announced that, starting next year, you'll have to pay for nytimes.com after reading a certain number of articles in a given month.

An email from Times Co. honchos Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Janet Robinson follows. Note that the Times apparently doesn't plan to combine this metered approach with a broader, Steve Brill-style consoritum.

The New York Times has a new, full-screen photo blog called "Lens"--and it might not exist without Boston.com's "The Big Picture." From a write-up in Photo District News:

Lens draws some inspiration from The Big Picture a photo blog published by Boston.com, which is also owned by The New York Times Company. The Big Picture pioneered a wide-screen layout that took advantage of improving resolutions of computer screens.

As Nick Kristof notes in today's New York Times, Web-based news consumption makes it easier than ever to avoid data and ideas we don't agree with, for better or (more likely) worse:

When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.

Nicholas Negroponte of M.

The main point of Michael Kinsley's anti-micropayments Times op-ed--"Two bucks per reader per month is not going to save newspapers"--is well taken, and worth considering if, like me, you've previously been intrigued by the pro-micropayments argument. (Ditto for the anti-micropayments case made by Gabriel Sherman today on Slate.

Earlier today I sat down with Ken Auletta, author of the New Yorker's "Annals of Communications" column, before his appearance at Harvard's Shorenstein Center. We covered a fair amount of ground: topics discussed include his upcoming book on the future of media; whether newspaper traditionalists should be excited about Amazon's Kindle 2.

If Steve Brill has his way, the New York Times will aggressively push back against the free-content model that's come to predominate on the internet--and the Boston Globe just might follow suit. As Brill puts it in a memo obtained and posted by Jim Romenesko:

The same model might be initiated for Boston Globe and other Times Company newspapers; indeed, there is a possibility that the more local papers, with less content competition, will be able to make the transition just as effectively.

If you're marvelling at the measured tone of Muammar Qaddafi's op-ed in today's Times, make sure you read Kevin Cullen's column in today's Globe as well.

Citing Chelmsford resident Mohammed Eljahmi, whose brother Fathi was imprisoned by Qaddafi's regime, Cullen argues that Qaddafi's current media offensive--which also featured an op-ed on Russia that ran in the Globe and the Washington Times--amounts to a transparent push for undeserved image rehabilitation.

Last week, I argued that our Deval Patrick's post-election courtship of the media contrasted unfavorably with Barack Obama's. In retrospect, I may have exaggerate Obama's willingness to cultivate the press as a whole; among other things, he's been surprisingly cool to the New York Times.

Still, Obama seems to know that it's better to build relationships with the media rather than needlessly antagonizing them--and, when he feels like it, can do so pretty smoothly.

When the Times announced Bono's hiring as an op-ed columnist, editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal had this to say: “Bono is a great addition to our Op-Ed line-up. He is an extraordinary man who thinks deeply about his art and the major issues confronting the world. His writing will reflect that.”

In its sharp deconstruction of today's Maureen Dowd column--which attempts to make the case for Caroline Kennedy as U.S. senator--Gawker rightly notes that Dowd seems to have a double standard regarding the thin resumes of Kennedy and one Sarah Palin.

Undiscussed, though, is the bogus argument Dowd uses to close out her piece.

My buddy Dan Kennedy dimisses this NY Times Q-and-A with "Caroline Kennedy and her staff" (the paper's phrase) as "crapola," and argues that the Times shouldn't have run it.

His "crapola" assessment is dead on. But to my mind, that's exactly why the Times did the right thing in printing the interview.