There are a lot of things about the Internet that I like.
For people who do what I do for a living, it has solved two age-old problems.
One is that we print the newspaper exactly once a day and then deliver it to homes and stores across the county. Think news stops just because we have shut down our press? Uh, not exactly.
Our website now allows us to deliver news 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We deliver breaking news, sometimes with as little as a single sentence, then develop the story from there. With each new morsel of information, we are able to update our story online.
The web also gives us a place to put all those things that don’t fit into the print edition every day. People always ask me what the tough decisions I have to make every day are. The tough call is not what is going into the newspaper, those decisions pretty much make themselves. The really tough decisions are what to do with all the stories that I would love to get into print every day, but which I know are not going to make it. Now I have a place to put them.
To the best of my knowledge, no one has found an end to the Internet. At least not yet. We are limited only by how fast we can shovel the information out there.
But I am here to tell you that there are some things about the Internet that bother me.
One in particular. The lines between what had always been considered “journalism” and some of what occurs online gets a little more blurry every day.
Our history tells us that we properly check out stories, source the information we use, and attribute it whenever we can.
Anyone who has worked more than a few hours in this racket knows we are bombarded every day with what can best be described as “rumors.” There was a time when we would listen, check it out and then drop it when the information didn’t pan out.
Now, through the wonders of the Internet, there appears to be a growing move toward simply throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Labeling something as “rumor” doesn’t seem to be stop anyone from “publishing” it on the Internet. On blogs. Via Twitter. On Facebook. And also talking about it on TV and radio.
The issue has popped up again in the maelstrom surrounding the Penn State child sex case and the firing of Joe Paterno.
In particular there is another wild story circulating around the main suspect in the saga, former defensive coach Jerry Sandusky.
It is being clearly labeled as “rumor,” but that hasn’t stopped it from showing up online and people talking about it.
There was a time when that never would have happened.
Sometimes I still long for those days.
For people who do what I do for a living, it has solved two age-old problems.
One is that we print the newspaper exactly once a day and then deliver it to homes and stores across the county. Think news stops just because we have shut down our press? Uh, not exactly.
Our website now allows us to deliver news 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We deliver breaking news, sometimes with as little as a single sentence, then develop the story from there. With each new morsel of information, we are able to update our story online.
The web also gives us a place to put all those things that don’t fit into the print edition every day. People always ask me what the tough decisions I have to make every day are. The tough call is not what is going into the newspaper, those decisions pretty much make themselves. The really tough decisions are what to do with all the stories that I would love to get into print every day, but which I know are not going to make it. Now I have a place to put them.
To the best of my knowledge, no one has found an end to the Internet. At least not yet. We are limited only by how fast we can shovel the information out there.
But I am here to tell you that there are some things about the Internet that bother me.
One in particular. The lines between what had always been considered “journalism” and some of what occurs online gets a little more blurry every day.
Our history tells us that we properly check out stories, source the information we use, and attribute it whenever we can.
Anyone who has worked more than a few hours in this racket knows we are bombarded every day with what can best be described as “rumors.” There was a time when we would listen, check it out and then drop it when the information didn’t pan out.
Now, through the wonders of the Internet, there appears to be a growing move toward simply throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Labeling something as “rumor” doesn’t seem to be stop anyone from “publishing” it on the Internet. On blogs. Via Twitter. On Facebook. And also talking about it on TV and radio.
The issue has popped up again in the maelstrom surrounding the Penn State child sex case and the firing of Joe Paterno.
In particular there is another wild story circulating around the main suspect in the saga, former defensive coach Jerry Sandusky.
It is being clearly labeled as “rumor,” but that hasn’t stopped it from showing up online and people talking about it.
There was a time when that never would have happened.
Sometimes I still long for those days.
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