Writing for the Observer, Britain's Sunday newspaper, author John Naughton reminds us how Gutenberg's invention of movable type had unanticipated side effects. It would "undermine the authority of the Catholic church, power the Renaissance and the Reformation, enable the Enlightenment and the rise of modern science, create new social classes and even change our concept of childhood." But who knew?

And today we have Tim Berners-Lee's gift to humanity, the World Wide Web. As Naughton writes:

Poynter's Rick Edmonds, in a rambling review of the ten-trends sort, says "Measurement is easy" and adds "Actionable measurement is tougher."

I'll go way beyond that: Measurement is outright hard, and it can be dangerously misleading.

A good metrics system is a boon to any site -- for sales purposes.

But for analysis, beware. We don't know what we don't know, and serving up a bunch of dazzling charts, graphs and heatmaps is a good way to be led astray.

Some examples:

One of the more self-destructive traits of American journalism is the general disdain of local reporting. In the news biz there is a pecking order, and second-worst place to be is a suburban bureau. The absolutely worst place to be is a newspaper so small that it doesn't have any suburban bureaus.

Writing for Slate, media commentator Jack Schafer piles it on, saying newspapers that focus on local news are "dumbing down" and "targeting a less-educated audience."

Pew's report "Bloggers: A portrait of the Internet's new storytellers" has already been thoroughly discussed by the usual suspects, but I can't resist observing that the Hindu fable of the blind men and the elephant is once again in play. Much nonsense about the blogosphere has been written by people who apparently have encountered only the tusk or the trunk. The Pew report paints a more complete picture.