According to the article, with bloggers detailing every word and news Web sites posting slideshows and videos, sports executives are looking to limit this ever-growing coverage - and drive fans to their team Web sites.

So the Times asks, “Who owns sports coverage?” Some sources in the stories suggest that these disputes may end up in court.

The Newseum, whose slogan is “The Interactive Museum of News,” is funded mainly by the Freedom Foundation, a non-partisan group devoted to furthering the freedom of press, so it isn’t totally fair to compare the investment in the museum to what’s happening in the real world. But it is an interesting observation.

I haven’t seen the museum personally, but the write-ups paint an impressive picture - a brand new building on Pennsylvania Avenue, a news helicopter hanging from the ceiling, dozens of interactive computer exhibits, 15 theaters, and the list goes on.

I was struck by the juxtaposition of the article I read about the museum in today’s The New York Times and an article published earlier in the week about the financial difficulties faced by Sam Zell, who recently took over ownership of the Tribune Corp., my former employer.

Here are some numbers from both articles.

According to the museum story, the Newseum cost $450 million to build. That’s about half of Tribune’s $1 billion debt service bill for this year and close to the amount of money needed to buy Newsday, which Tribune is considering selling to offset its huge debt, according to figures in the Zell story.

Again, taking numbers from these two articles — the museum’s operating budget for this year is $50 million, not an insignificant sum when compared to Tribune’s reported net income last year of $87 million.

The figure that struck me most was in a Washington Post article, which reported that rooms can be rented for events at the Newseum for $500 to $30,000. That $30,000 figure is within range of some starting annual salaries for reporters breaking into the business.

As I trolled through various Web pages looking for an item for this blog, I clicked into “iReport,” off of CNN’s main home page on the Web. The headline was too tempting to resist, “YOU take control of the news.”

I went to the site where I was as greeted with more strong words, “Unedited. Unfiltered. News.”

After a bit of Internet research, I found that iReport is a special Web site being developed by CNN to promote citizen journalism – that meaning reporting done by non-professional journalists.

 A recent article on Information Week’s Web site gives a good summary of what  CNN is looking to develop. According to the article, anybody who registers can upload video, photos and stories to iReport where it is posted “unfiltered.” Then the best reports are linked to CNN’s Web site.

 When I checked, the iReport site had video and many good photos up from the Olympic torch protest in Paris.

 Not a bad way to encourage the public’s involvement in the newsgathering process, but still keep some editorial control over what appears on a news organization’s Web site.

I walk through Madison Square Park most days on my way to work from the subway so you can imagine my surprise when I noticed a sign announcing an outdoor exhibit, “Online Newspapers: New York Edition.”

There I was on my way to teach students about online news and the park I trudge through on my commute was hosting an art installation on that very subject. A true convergence!

I returned that afternoon after classes with a digital camera to spend some time at the four video screens that make up the exhibit, which can be found in the area near the Shake Shack.

The images aren’t of Web pages of local newspapers, rather they are photos of the actual front pages of print editions on which the artists Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenscheid have superimposed whimsical animation, such as the bevy of cute animals that jump all over the front page of the very serious Wall Street Journal.

My favorite was The New York Post display. On top of the headline, “Bad Bear,” about the British teacher who had been jailed in the Sudan for naming the class bear Muhammad, the artists laid out a cascading pile of sweet and cuddly Teddy bears.

I liked it. I was able to smile and just for a moment not take the news so seriously. But this is art and the artists obviously were striving to make some meaningful statement.

According to the Madison Square Park Web site, the artists were reviving the “amateur aesthetic” of the early years of the Internet. Here is the explanation:

 “They imagine how news sites would appear were they developed by the lay journalists whose aesthetic choices defined Web culture before the dot-com boom. By applying this aesthetic to a particular cross section of New York City papers, the artists subtly point to the qualitative assumptions we make about information we read and the significant role design plays in these impressions.”

Okay. I’ll have to think about that, but I might just stop on my way to work to enjoy a smile. The exhibit runs through April 27.

“According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well - sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter - reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com - with a social one.”

The article underscores the fact that the ease with which the Internet allows the transfer of information is leading people to get to their news in non-traditional ways.

An area I haven’t touched upon yet in this blog is the ability of the Web to aggregate news by subject matter. This may seem very obvious to some of you, but I wanted to draw attention to the way it affects traditional news Web sites.

More and more people are using searches such as Google and Yahoo news, which organize the news by topic and then list links to stories written by different news organizations. When you can see the top news stories from a selection of outlets, why go to just one site for your news?

This means that people are entering news Web sites through larger search engines, not by going to the home page and seeing what the editors have posted and chosen as the top stories. It also means people might not have the same attachment and loyalty to “their” news Web site like they used to have to the local newspaper. Just another example of how news consumption is changing.

Another type of news aggregator to watch are sites such as digg.com, which post stories, photos, videos and podcasts based on the number of times they are recommended by readers. I find these lists interesting but often skewed heavily with stories about technology, politics and the weird and whacky.

The editorial part of  news organizations were credited with being innovative in finding ways to use new technology. The report criticized Madison Avenue for not moving more quickly to find ways to make advertising pay on news Web sites.

The section on the major trends  identified by the study is important reading for all who work - or those of you looking to work - in the news business.

That blockbuster of story – the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal – has spurned a million stories, blog entries, photo galleries and interactive features. 

As an exercise, I scrolled through the local online coverage and pulled out a few links that illustrate how the written word was augmented by many online features.

If anything, the breadth of coverage shows how a big story gets covered in the digital era.

nytimes.com:

Interactive timeline: Milestones in an Ambitious Career

Audio: Back story with Sewell Chan

nypost.com

Write your own Post headline (not censored)

Video: Spitzer’s apology

nydailynews.com

Photo gallery: Political career

Poll: Should Spitzer resign?

amny.com

Video: Reaction on Wall Street

Photo Gallery: Inside the Emperor’s Club

nysun.com

PDF: Criminal complaint about Client 9

nymag.com

Predict the New York Post’s headline