It's interesting and funny. EDIT: disclaimer I haven't read the Swartz piece since I read this. [Except screw Evgeny Morozov, he's a fool and an alarmist. I attended one of his lectures and argued with him a couple months ago. He fears Google; I respect Google. We talked at cross-purposes.] EDIT2: "They point out that newspapers are a key part of our democracy, that by exposing wrong-doing to the people, they force the wrong-doers to stop." -- good lord no, the media is worse than the government, although they're similar. EDIT3: "With the time people waste reading a newspaper every day, they could have read an entire book about most subjects covered and thereby learned about it with far more detail and far more impact than the daily doses they get dribbled out by the paper. But people, of course, wouldn’t read a book about most subjects covered in the paper, because most of them are simply irrelevant." yes. EDIT4: I assume the twitter plug intentionally ironic, but maybe not.