News and the Collective Conscience
Posted by Andrew | Filed under New Media
We truly live in a wonderful time. Back when my dad was growing up, there were only three channels and most of them had “BC” in their name. That really reflects the era of time that their idea of broadcasting came from. And in other countries around the world, it was more of the same. Mostly public government owned broadcasters both on radio and television, at least in America, we had three “unbiased” private corporations bringing us our news. Man, times were much simpler back when only major corporations like General Electric and Walt Disney were the only ones who could report the news.
But then, people like Dave Winer, Adam Curry and Leo Laporte decided to take a dump all over this perfect American media system. They started writing blogs, and hosting podcasts and managing RSS feeds and now they are Twittering! And then people like Kevin Rose decided that the audience should be the one to decide what the top news headlines should be! And then the ultimate thorn in the side of any major media corporation, Craig Newmark, who decided that advertising and classifieds can be free.
Back in the old days, the only way your opinion could get on the air was if you owned the station. Alternatively, you could buy a newspaper company and get your opinions out there, and I’ve heard there are some great deals out there now. But, you can just save your money by going to Blogger or Twitter and just posting online for absolutely nothing. And now, most news organizations allow people to comment on the stories that they post right on their websites! From small and measly local papers and radio stations to major national newspapers and networks. NPR will now read people’s Twitter responses on the air!
Now, you are probably thinking to yourself, “Andrew, you post a blog, you host a podcast and post regularly to Twitter and read Digg and all of that.” You of course are absolutely right, but what you are forgetting is that my opinion actually matters. And guess what, yours does too. All news and information out there is biased and has an agenda no matter what. But, the Internet and new media have allowed us to display different points of view on events and ideas reported in the media in a single place. People thought that CNN was a revolution back when it came on the scene. But the revolution that is taking place right here, right now on blogs like this, podcasts, and other social networking, and information aggregating (wow, thats a word!) sites is one hundred times more earth shattering than anything Ted Turner did.
