Howie Kurtz makes a typical veteran mistake of logic in his Monday column, “Ink-Stained to Link-Strained: A Kvetch.” See if you can catch it:

Now, liberated from the stranglehold of CBS, NBC and ABC, we can watch news channels that match our political predilections. Read Web sites that reinforce our opinions . . . In short, we can now get anything we want, at the precise moment we want it, tailored to our merest whim. Who'd want to give that up?

Not me, that's for sure. But isn't something lost if you can wall yourself off from views and information that challenge what you already believe? If everything is ordered a la carte? If -- and this really dates me as an ink-stained wretch -- you like turning the pages of a newspaper because you might bump into an unexpected story you would never have found online?

Kurtz assumes that when services such as iTunes or Netflix let users pick and choose or when a news Web site is personalized, it means blacking out that once omniscient editorial voice. He worries that people will become self-reinforcing piles of mush.

What folks who posit this untruth are missing is that in every modern case of personalization, the exact opposite occurs. Whenever a service allows you to pick exactly what you want, then the user becomes more likely to listen to recommendations from that service. Not less likely.

For example, because Netflix allows me to pick my own movies, I sometimes listen when it recommends flicks. Even if the recommendation is a documentary (which equates to eating your vegetables), I sometimes rent it.

The same can be true for newspapers. If we give users more control over which stories they read, then they will eventually rely more on our recommendations about stories they should read.