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The profusion of data has changed the character of journalism. It has turned it into a commodity, something to be marketed, tested, and calibrated. Perhaps media have always thought this way. But if that impulse always existed, it was at least buffered. [...]

It wouldn't take much for a search engine to tip public opinion. One study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, attempted to simulate the workings of Google [...] the authors kept reordering search results and then asking respondents to divulge their opinions. Placem…

Old gatekeepers might not always have been worthy of praise, but at least there were a lot of them. And in that multiplicity there was the basis for democracy. In Amazon's vision of the future, there's just one gate. And while Jeff Bezos may wave everyone through, the health of the book business ha…