Thinking about how many people are jumping into social networking — which is, in a way, a substitute for real world networking — got me thinking about the planet Krypton, Superman’s homeworld.

If I’m remembering my lore correctly (and recent plot lines in the comic series may have changed this), Krypton was a barren and cold place whose inhabitants isolated themselves in their homes, eschewing physical contact with other people. Physical contact and even meeting in person was distasteful and only done when necessary. (See also E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops”)

Is Facebook a gateway to this? Will we become so distanced from our natural world, so lost in the virtual one that we forget our connection with the world around us and eventually let mad scientist/dictators destroy our planet, leaving only a single survivor rocketing toward safety on some distant, habitable world where he will grow up to become a champion for truth and justice?

I’m just saying it’s possible. That’s all.

His recent post tells us that we can expect the new crop of editors and publishers to recognize that news is decentralized and that it will have to respect its audience more if it wants to attract an audience in the digital age.

He also writes that journalism will improve, as the need for quality reporting and writing will only improve when the market become saturated with thousands of competing news sites.

It’s refreshing to hear an optimist, but then again, Stovall doesn’t even approach the topic of money in this particular post. How a news organization will pay for itself remains a question firmly up in the air, if that can even be a phrase.

But I wonder whether that is true for newspapers in small cities. I know for a fact that my local 18,000-circulation paper is starting to think about the Web as its primary source of news; the newsroom is taking its first steps anyhow.

Say that my paper does become Web-centric, posting stories online as they are done and using the print version as a digest of all the online work done the previous day. Can this work in a city of this size, where offices actually close at 5 p.m. and there just aren’t any sources to talk to much after nightfall?

In other words, can the 24/7 newsroom operate in a small city that doesn’t really operate 24/7? Is there any point to a 24/7 newsroom in that city? Is there any point to a Web-centric newsroom — the benefit of which is quick dissemination of news — in such a city?

Neil Gaiman, the author of the book “Coraline,” noted Moreau’s review in his Twitter feed, which has been filled with “Coraline” release notes lately — basically Gaiman writing about how tired he is from all the promotions and parties and premiere events he’s had to attend. Gaiman’s Twitter fans took one look at Moreau’s review and started filling its comments section with “uh… FAIL” messages and jokes at the expense of Moreau’s writing experience and the paper’s fact-checking thoroughness.

No whisper of a correction from the paper yet, by the way, but I’ll be checking in to see tomorrow morning.

I’m playing with theming a bbPress site right now, though if anybody has toyed with it in the past and can offer any tips, don’t hesitate.

Oh, and don’t think this has anything to do with adding forums to this site. I don’t think my dozens of fans readers are clamoring for a place to air their opinions on Hypercrit.net. This is just for fun.

The story revolves around a network that’s bleeding money, especially from its news division, which loses around $30 million per year. After the network’s news anchor is laid off, he goes a bit nuts and starts cussin’ and revelatin’ on the air.

The viewers, browbeaten by a recession and terrorism and violence and general hopelessness, eat up the anchor’s odd behavior, and the network gives control of the news division over to the programming division, which turns the nightly news into a targeted show, designed to appeal to the most people and earn the highest ratings possible — integrity be damned.

What struck me about the movie is the quickness with which the corporate owners of the news abandon tradition and ethics in favor of advertising revenues and popularity. The honchos are willing to do anything to make money and save their stockholders’ pocketbooks.

The whole movie is an indictment of corporate ownership of media. It paints a bleak picture of what could happen to the news if profits are put over the news’s social mission.

This is the obvious message the film is trying to push, but I think there’s another message buried just a little deeper. Most of the pubic and some of the younger characters in the movie are described as having grown up hooked on television — unable to tell the difference between reality and the simulated world on the screen in front of them. As a result, this generation of TV-people eschew tradition and embrace the kind of drama and senseless violence that can only really happen on TV.

I connect this to the current debate between the print and digital generations — those people who have grown up primarily interacting with book and those who grew up with computers — or newspapers and the Web.

The movie wants us to feel some remorse that we’re letting the old traditions and media be corrupted for the sake of profit, wants us to grieve for the loss of something that’s better than what we have now; but the movie doesn’t come right out and tell us that the old ways were best. I think that was wise on the part of the filmmakers, and I think it’s still the message we need to take away today.

The old ways are to be missed and maybe defended, but they aren’t necessarily better than what has been developed since.

And another thing about the movie: It’s full of dialogue. Talk, talk, talk, and I loved the hell out of it. Plus, the whole movie is filled with television jargon and big words, and it doesn’t apologize for those words once or try to dumb down its dialogue for the common viewer. I appreciated that.