Just about everyone has thrown a thought or two by now into the great bubbling pot of stew that is the future of journalism. Latest in line is Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience.

Mayer, one of Google’s earliest employees who gets reams of newsprint in Silicon Valley for her cupcake spreadsheets and love of Oscar de la Renta, spoke before a Senate subcommittee on a future of journalism hearing on Wednesday.

Apart from defending Google, which has come under attack from the news industry — most notably the Associated Press — for profiting from content, Mayer gave some tips on how journalists should write their stories.

Mayer talked about something she called the “atomic unit of consumption” — a news article rather than an entire newspaper, much like one song downloaded digitally instead of buying an entire album. Here’s an excerpt from her prepared testimony:

The atomic unit of consumption for existing media is almost always disrupted by emerging media. For example, digital music caused consumers to think about their purchases as individual songs rather than as full albums. Digital and on-demand video has caused people to view variable-length clips when it is convenient for them, rather than fixed-length programs on a fixed broadcast schedule.

Similarly, the structure of the Web has caused the atomic unit of consumption for news to migrate from the full newspaper to the individual article. As with music and video, many people still consume physical newspapers in their original full-length format. But with online news, a reader is much more likely to arrive at a single article. While these individual articles could be accessed from a newspaper’s homepage, readers often click directly to a particular article via a search engine or another Website.

Mayer then went on to suggest that reporters and editors need to think differently about how they write for online:

Treating the article as the atomic unit of consumption online has several powerful consequences. When producing an article for online news, the publisher must assume that a reader may be viewing this article on its own, independent of the rest of the publication.

To make an article effective in a standalone setting requires providing sufficient context for first-time readers, while clearly calling out the latest information for those following a story over time. It also requires a different approach to monetization: each individual article should be self-sustaining. These types of changes will require innovation and experimentation in how news is delivered online, and how advertising can support it.

So wait, now the big bad wolf is counseling Little Red Riding Hood before gobbling her up for dinner? Maybe Google and news publishers can be friends… or at least frenemies. Read Mayer’s full testimony here.

Keep an eye on:

• Online video site Hulu signs its first international TV content deals. (Financial Times)
• Former CNBC host lands at MSNBC. (Associated Press)
• Hear it once and for all: Twitter is not for sale. (Reuters)

(Photo: Actress Brooke Shields portrays Little Red Riding Hood at a charity fundraiser/Reuters)

Microsoft is trying out a series of new home pages for its MSN web portal in an effort to drum up some new — and likely younger — readers to attract advertisers.

The first experiment, launching today, is an entertainment-themed home page, promising news, gossip and videos on all manner of celebrities, in much the same way that many rivals do.

Microsoft’s money-losing online business is hoping to capitalize on the 84 percent of Internet users it says visit entertainment-related sites, building on the 70 million or so people it says already visit the MSN site for entertainment content.

Microsoft sites badly need more readers to lift themselves up from a lowly fifth in the online display ad market, trailing Yahoo, Fox, Facebook and AOL. The company may yet hatch some sort of deal with Yahoo to bolster its online presence.

For now, MSN is planning on going it alone. The new-look home pages won’t replace the standard MSN home page, but they are options users can choose to get more of what they want. More themed home pages will be launched in coming months, but Microsoft hasn’t said what they will be.

As America celebrated a historic presidential election on Nov. 4, US newspapers also celebrated their (one-day) revival as all major city newspapers were cleared off the shelves the next day. Media industry watchers hailed President-elect Barack Obama’s media Midas touch, as if he could even save the long suffering newspaper business.

It would seem the Obama effect helped Yahoo News snatch the number one online spot on Election Day, with 7.6 million unique users. It was the largest single-day audience in online news history, Yahoo said, citing the latest comScore Media Metrix figures.

This is nice news for Yahoo, away from the world of volatile stock prices and non-seller remorse. Yahoo’s stock briefly dropped to single-digit territory today before rallying to end up 8 percent at $11.15. It’s still some $30 billion cheaper than Microsoft’s bid.

Anyway, back to the magical Election Day, when Yahoo beat political news stalwarts like MSNBC, CNN and FoxNews.

Election Day audience figures for the top five online news sites according to comScore were:

1. Yahoo! News: 7.6 million unique users, 259,244,751 total page views
2. MSNBC: 6.8 million unique users, 232,076,565 total page views
3. CNN.com: 6.3 million unique users, 134,573,839 total page views
4. AOL News: 2.5 million unique users, 45,122,501 total page views
5. FoxNews.com:1.9 million unique users, 31,856,733 total page views

Yahoo’s own internal figures show that users spent an average of 14.2 minutes per session on the Yahoo News Political Dashboard on Election Day, and Yahoo’s oneSearch recorded a 780 percent increase in election-related search queries on Nov 4 compared to the day before.

Aside from Yahoo execs, these statistics are also quite interesting to advertisers want to know that they’re reaching more eyeballs than ever. Here’s a quote from the Yahoo press release:

“In purchasing media for the launch of the all-new Dodge Ram 1500 truck a year ago, we knew Yahoo! would be an important place to be on Election Day as it is viewed by many as the fifth network,” said Susan Thomson, director of media, Chrysler. “The high audience numbers Yahoo! received that day paid off for Dodge as well.”

(Photo: Reuters)

I’m skipping the attempt at a witty first sentence and going straight to the press release:

Young adults often click away from 2008 election news online because they feel the sites bombard them with too much information and too many choices, according to a new study released by Northwestern University’s Media Management Center.

Here’s more: The MMC survey of 89 young people between the age of 17 and 22 — who are eligible to vote for president for the first time in 2008 — found that while they are interested in the elections and want information about the candidates and issues, they don’t want to spend much time following day-to-day developments. However, they do appreciate news sites that help them — and other new voters — understand the basics about the candidates, issues and election process.

The big problem, apparently, is the “too muchness” of all that coverage. Specifically:

• Too many things competing for attention, without clues about what is most important;
• Too many details;
• Too wordy; not distilled to the essence;
• Too many choices;
• Too much text, too high a percentage of text to graphics, or a screen of mostly text;
• Site features that they don’t immediately understand;
• Pages or stories that go on and on and on.

The study recommends:

• Place huge emphasis on clear, helpful, immediately understandable organization and design that signals what to focus on and conveys the relative importance of offerings on a page. Short, meaningful, compelling headlines are essential.
• Offer content in manageable layers and chunks, letting the reader decide how deep to go. When stories go more than a page, young adults tend to tune out. However, if stories maintain their interest enough to click on a link, the millennials want some substance.
• Have a lot but display a little. It’s better for this audience to be selective in what is presented (with links to more information) than to overwhelm with “too much.”
• Concentrate most on information resources that help young people (and other new voters) understand the basics about the candidates, the issues and the election process.

Essentially, the study appears to be recommending better editing. But it also sounds like something that new wave band Devo said more concisely many years ago in a fairly popular song:

“Freedom of choice is what you got. Freedom from choice is what you want.”

(Yawning boy photo: Reuters)