Have you read Cluetrain Manifesto.

I feel the Internet offers an excellent opportunity to serve the information that surfers are interested in, but intuitively, isn't there a point where the conversation is manipulated by endlessly serving feeds to similar content.

I find that there are closed loops, where I am swimming circles in the same information pool, when I am guided to other similar content. I like StumbleUpon - a web-browser extension that lets me pick a topic and explore sites that I would have otherwise never known existed. There is relative suggestion, but the algorithm includes peer evaluation and an element of random switches to who knows where. I like to explore unchartered zones (to me) more than being guided by a homogeneous algorithm.

Tools for user's ease are getting so useful, that keeping track of them is growing complicated. Craigslist is obvious, efficient and my Mom can use it. I hear from web designers and bloggers about the newest features and potential advances. There is a lot of discussion about intuitive aggregation and semantic web functionality to a intellectual rhyme that pushes the envelope wide open, and all the contents spill out. Ideas are free and saying that we need a better navigation system on the new Escalade is extraneous when we are just learning to read a map (most of us, a fact we forget when trying to sound hip in tech convos).

On the other hand, hyper-local is a beautiful thing. The niche journalism will not only save many new sources (Colleges, small town presses), but I feel optimistic that a re-democratization of our society will continue to emerge when information is available, and local news is interesting information to people who see an opportunity to get involved.

Yes, it's possible for any business to serve up too much technical wizardry. The services can, at some point, overshoot the audience's needs. But newspaper Web sites have not hit that tipping point. Just the opposite. Most folks know how Netflix or Amazon works. And those sites include some interesting wizardry that would be useful for newspapers to emulate.

PegasusNews.com is apparently about to start a recommendation engine called the Daily You that does what you describe from StumbleUpon. Of course, it does it only for content on Pegasus News.

When Pegasus proves successful, my hope is this idea of Netflixing your news will spread. And if newspapers can perfect it for their own sites, perhaps they can aggregate all those RSS feeds you're talking about and recommend the best of the best to the readers they grow to know so well.

This is sort of what NewsGator does for folks.

Broadcast television, natural grass, print newspaper.