Feb. 4, 2014 3:57 p.m. ET
The anxiety of Internet news is that there's always one more headline to click. No one human could begin to sort through all those pages without going a little mad. So how do you become an informed citizen without making it your full-time job?
For all the limitations of their 400-year-old technology, newspapers prioritize information with headlines and photos to help you become well-versed about the world, usually in one sitting. Once upon a time, newspapers were the only way to do that.
News you can use? The Flipboard app, left, and Facebook's new Paper app, right. Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal
Lately, some of the smartest and most well-funded minds in Silicon Valley have been trying to create the smartphone equivalent of a newspaper. On Monday, Facebook FB -2.12% Facebook Inc. Cl A U.S.: Nasdaq $61.42 -1.33 -2.12% Feb. 5, 2014 11:12 am Volume (Delayed 15m) : 18.33M P/E Ratio 101.05 Market Cap $160.42 Billion < span class="inline-list">Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee $1,704,260 02/04/14 Facebook Paper vs. Flipboard: ... 02/04/14 What WSJ Is Reading Tuesday 02/03/14 Few Facebook Users Share Daily... More quote details and news » FB in 
Your Value Your Change Short position launched a new app, named Paper, for consuming stories, photos and video. Last week, Flipboard unveiled an upgrade to its digital magazine that organizes Web content even more like the sections in a print publication.
Curling up in a chair with a cup of coffee, I've been trying each in half-hour bursts, to see which could best bring me up to speed. I found Paper offered a broad view on what's popular, but not an authoritative take on my world, ranging from international events to local news.
Flipboard was a more satisfying read because it presents clear headlines and photos in a design cue borrowed from newspapers, while giving me control over the sources and topics of information I care most about.
These two aren't the only recent efforts to take on our news glut. Others have focused on offering quicker doses: In January, Yahoo YHOO -1.23% Yahoo! Inc. U.S.: Nasdaq $35.22 -0.44 -1.23% Feb. 5, 2014 11:12 am Volume (Delayed 15m) : 5.89M P/E Ratio 27.88 Market Cap $36.18 Billion Dividend Y ield N/A Rev. per Employee $400,032 02/05/14 The Morning Ledger: Twitter Ea... 02/05/14 How Twitter Will Use Tweets fo... 02/05/14 Investors Press Yahoo on Compe... More quote details and news » YHOO in 
Your Value Your Change Short position launched News Digest, an app that presents summaries of a handful of the most important stories, while a new app from a startup called Inside presents up to 1,000 s tories each day, in tight 300-character briefs.
What makes these apps different than any lone newspaper's digital service is that they present stories from a range of sources. To determine which ones to share, each app relies on its own combination of four factors: computer algorithms that gauge popularity; human editors; posts and interaction from your friends on social networks; and your own preferences.
The Paper app starts with your friends. After setup, the first screen you see consists of posts and links shared by friends—the same that you see on the Facebook news feed. There's a stream of content, cards for each shared item on the bottom half of the screen and a rolling series of photogenic previews up top.
One of Paper's biggest improvements on the existing Facebook app is the clean and intuitive new way you browse through those story cards, pushing your finger up to see more and flicking down to make it go away. There's also a new way to create posts that Facebook hopes will inspire new kinds of original content.
And there are sweet design flourishes throughout: Tilt your phone to see the outer edges of a horizontal photo; click "Like" on a post and hear a sound like a jack-in-the-box popping.
But in a surprising departure, the rest of the Paper app mostly ignores your friends. A team of editors, aided by Internet analytics, chooses stories to present across aptly named channels. "Headlines" for top stories, "Flavor" for food and "Exposure" for photojournalism. It's an about-face from the kind of all-about-me online sensibility that social networks have helped to create. At least for now, every Paper user sees the same stories.
The awkward reality is that Facebook's computer-assisted editors are probably better than your friends at selecting stories. Among Paper's curated channels, I spotted important stories about Nelson Mandela's estate and a shooting in Moscow, along with about 15 other stories I wanted to read. But many of those were more amusing than important, and during my test, the app missed some key stories of the day, including news on chemical weapons in Libya.
I would like to see more personalization, too, even if it's of the programmed sort. There's no way to choose a feed of information on a topic I created, or from a set of sources that I trust (many of whom I follow on my regular Facebook feed). There's no local news, either.
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Facebook product manager Michael Reckhow says Paper's goal isn't to be a news reader that stacks up headlines. The app highlights the creator (or at least, purveyor) of each post first, while headlines are optional. Facebook wants to help people discover a wide range of content—and the people behind the stories, says Mr. Reckhow. But without consistent headlines, I had a harder time getting a high-level glimpse of what's interesting and important.
Flipboard uses a different combination of controls, algorithms and social network feeds to present stories it says will be relevant to me.
Like Paper, it pulls photos from source links to present a highly visual reading experience, with channels arranged by topics like "News" and "Technology." But Flipboard goes further, allowing you to create your own channels on topics, or from news sources, your Facebook friends or Twitter TWTR -0.74% Twitter Inc. U.S.: NYSE $65.83 -0.49 -0.74% Feb. 5, 2014 11:12 am Volume (Delayed 15m) : 5.95M P/E Ratio N/A Market Cap $36.82 Billion Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee $267,231 02/05/14 How Twitter Will Use Tweets fo... 02/03/14 Esurance Wins the Twitter Bowl 01/31/14 Twitter Acquires More Than 900... More quote details and news » TWTR in 
Your Value Your Change Short position lists. The result is highly personal—and highly malleable.
Flipboard manages to turn a cacophony of news into a symphony that's only occasionally out of tune. Human editors choose the topics and stories they think are important (no Miley Cyrus in news, they promise), but then the app serves up headlines and photos tempered by what your friends are sharing on social networks, and the sources of news you've previously favored. I found about 20 stories of interest in a half-hour.
Flipboard's latest version features on its home page a new version of what it calls "Cover Stories"—a mini-magazine that includes seven stories in each of the categories you choose.
Combining these multiple points of view—and points of entry—gave me more of the news that was actually worth reading. I still didn't spot the Libyan weapons story, but it did point me to an excellent story about Janet Yellen that I didn't find in Facebook's Paper.
Flipboard could still do a better job. It isn't always clear to the reader why a particular story was surfaced, and while I preferred its devotion to the tried-and-true headline, it too often felt like a collection of them. Flipboard could benefit from the tinier type that Facebook uses on Paper, too. More information is packed in, but it's all still readable on today's high-resolution screens.
I preferred Flipboard, but Paper offers a better way than ever to consume and contribute to Facebook, while taking in a much broader picture of the world. Though this kind of lean-back news experience presents an alternative to gobbling a never-ending supply of news nuggets, both apps face the challenge of convincing us to make time for it.
—Watch a video on the Paper and Flipboard apps at WSJ.com/Tech. Contact Geoffrey Fowler at Geoffrey.Fowler@wsj.com and on Twitter at @geoffreyfowler
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