Automated Restructuring of an Electronic Newspaper

The Freshman Fishwrap project at the MIT Media Laboratory makes a personalized electronic newspaper available to any interested member of the MIT community. In its original implementation the Fishwrap's software provided a mechanism for readers to manipulate the elements that would be contained in their paper, but lacked the ability to respond to their reading habits by modifying the order of the presentation of those elements. An algorithm is explored for automated structuring of an electronic newspaper. The objective was to create an algorithm that effectively restructures the newspaper while moniter-ing the reading habits of the user in order to alter the structure of his paper to reflect these habits. The algorithm was designed with integration into the Freshman Fishwrap project in mind.