ReadWriteWeb

The good old days of print journalism are becoming just that - good old days, the domain of old timers who reminisce about tape recorders and digging through other people's garbage bins.

While such reminiscences undoubtedly wrench a wistful sigh from the breast of those who lived and worked in those heady days (like, before 2002), educating young would-be journalists about how early adopters and the tech-minded are consuming and helping distribute news is a necessary step to ensure the evolution rather than the extinction of American news services. Northwestern University has taken productive steps in that direction this spring and is set to present five interesting, student-created news apps this week.

Over the past couple of months, Jason Goldberg, who previously founded job search engine Jobster and vacated the CEO role last December to "pursue other early stage ventures," has quietly relaunched his personal blog social|median and transformed it into a collaborative news filtering service. The service is still very rough around the edges and is just weeks into a private alpha test. 1000 ReadWriteWeb readers can gain access to the invite only alpha by going to the sign up page and using "RWW" (without the quotes) as the invite code.