Since the dawn of the printing press and the town crier, news distribution has always been a labor intensive process. The Internet upended the longstanding dynamic, removing not just the printing press, but in some cases the crier as well: news editors were being replaced by algorithms that automatically tailor news feeds based on what they know about Web surfers’ preferences.
That, of course, eliminates the serendipity factor: stumbling on something that a professional thought was inherently interesting enough for you to see. Amid growing criticism that faceless algorithms are at least partially responsible for the spread of “fake news,” Apple is introducing an innovation to its news feed: human editors. Courtesy The New York Times.