The iPad is here, and many people love it. But, uniquely for Apple, some fans and techies aren’t impressed enough to overlook that the iPad is probably the most restricted computing device to hit the personal computing market in years. Thanks to the iPad and the fourth-generation iPhone operating system, we may be approaching a new era of a closed Internet.

On January 27, 2010, the day Steve Jobs announced that the brand new iPad would not work with Flash, I was preparing to teach the second week of "Web Design for Journalists" at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The class, too, was brand new. The topic was building cutting edge motion graphics to enhance our reporting. And we were going to use…Flash.

The salt-flats speed of technology haunts the syllabi of new media journalism professors. Yet for all the time new technologies gobble up, the primary challenge for journalism schools in 2010 is a more basic question of identity: What should a journalism program teach in the digital world?

Two amazing women won the Pulitzer for my city this week – Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman. They investigated corrupt narcotics cops who lied about evidence, and threatened and got violent when the reporters brought the story to light. Their series – Tainted Justice – bubbles like the best potboiler – until you remember that families’ lives and hundreds of folks accused of crimes were brought down by this corrupt team of police. Laker and Ruderman’s story has resulted in, according to the Daily News’s victory lap article in Tuesday’s paper:

Their investigation into Officer Jeffrey Cujdik and other members of the Narcotics Field Unit began last February, when an informant told the reporters that the cops sometimes lied on search warrants.

Are you still trying to make sense of last week's court decision, which ruled the FCC lacks authority over the Internet? There have been so many articles and so much spin, it’s hard to know what this decision means for Net Neutrality and our work to bridge the nation’s digital divide.

For some clarity, check out this Q&A between Washington Post's Cecilia Kang and Free Press policy director Ben Scott, in which they discuss the effect of last week's court decision on the future of the Internet.