Can people get even dumber? Forgive me for the cynical view of my own species but … well, some of my best friends are human. Actually dumber is not quite accurate. Can they get even more ignorant? If our lack of interest in anything besides ourselves wasn’t bad enough, now humanity is being aided and abetted by the latest in technology.

To wit, this advance being unveiled at the MSN homepage:

The shift to mass production of content incites strong interest and controversy. Demand Media, AOL and others are making bets on a content model that can be massively scaled and is driven by data rather than the gut feelings of experienced editors. As media companies look for ways to produce more content faster, they will need to decide whether they can compete as artisans or whether they need to start building factories of their own. Here are some resources to help you understand the landscape.

If Google can’t make money off the news, who can? That’s the heart of a brilliant post by C.D. Nixon which says a bunch of things most journalists and many publishers can’t bear to admit. Nixon’s post  features a picture of a Google search for “Afghanistan war.”  

I’ve been in journalism for close to 30 years. As one would expect, my skills, the tools of the trade and the state of the industry itself have evolved dramatically over that time.

Newsrooms that once functioned under a cloud of cigarette smoke now work in a cloud computing environment. Writers who once tucked a reporter’s notebook in their back pocket now wield a digital voice recorder or a Flip camcorder. Editors who once redlined copy and haggled over how headlines matched the lead art now stress over Web analytics and keyword selection.

Our industry is caught between “what was” and “what will be.”  Which means that “what is” is up for grabs. And when things are up for grabs, people get busy.  Busy preserving their livelihoods, their positions, their power.

Ironically, the preservation of editorial power comes down to language.

Most media companies are running on skeleton editorial crews, but must feed a constant 24/7 demand for new content online. If your editorial team can't consistently produce enough content to satisfy reader demand, those readers may drift away.  Many media companies succeed in spite of stretched editorial staff by blending professional editorial content with user-generated content (UGC) and advertiser-generated content (AGC).

The Atlantic is looking to a new commenting system to help increase reader engagement on its newly redesigned website.

The Atlantic, a 150-plus-year-old magazine that publishes in print 10 times a year, covers culture, business and politics. The website redesign, launched earlier this week, is designed to better integrate magazine content, blogs, videos and other Web content around seven topic areas.