Rich Skrenta, NU alum and CEO of Topix.net has a good wide ranging post on "The Incremental Web", his term for the rapidly growing, frequntly updating portion of the Web. The gist? This part of the Web is the frontline for research, development, new services, and new businesses.
For the most part I agree with where Skrenta is headed. It's interesting how a range of approaches to interacting with the Incremental Web are emerging. We've got neanderthal RSS aggregators, hyper-personalized tools like Findory, topic oriented Topix.net, and who knows what else lurking in the hinterlands.
One point of departure I have though, is the intense emphasis on freshness. While it shows up in the "newspaper", one thing editorial staff is good for is reconciling and recontextualizing new information with past content. Think of all those retrospectives, backgrounders, recaps, and chronologies your local ink stained wretches put together. Something that usefully mixed The Incremental Web and The Reference Web would be mighty handy.