Tom's Blog of News-y Goodness

By the People, For the People

A week or so ago, I posted about CNN's new I-Report feature along with some admittantly shallow commentary. But it was shallow for a reason - I saw it as a gimmick and not a legitimate source of news. So of course, because fate has a sense of irony, last week's class featured Paul Brennan, deputy editor of BBC's News Interactive, giving a presentation on user-generated content.

Oops.

Well, not really. When he talked about user-generated content, what he was referring to was really pictures and movies and audio clips of news events that people sent in to the BBC. This is not anything new or revolutionary. What's interesting is that this sort of thing has not only been coordinated and organized, it's become encouraged. There's an entire system in place to handle all the emails and media coming in from citizen journalists across the world. The amount of media obtained regarding the London bombings of last year was staggering and immensely useful.

There's a lot going on in a complicated issue like user-generated content, but to be sure, this is only a revolution in newsgathering. The dissemination is still left to the journalists, and that's the important thing. That's why something like CNN's I-Report seems wrong, because the entire philosophy behind citizen journalism seems fake to me. The job of the press is to be a filter between world events and the audience.

In any case, the important thing I got out of the presentation was that the internet has allowed journalists to have access to a volume and variety of media that is totally unprecedented.

* * *

Ok, so what's Google playing at exactly?

http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/10/technology/googleyoutube_reaction/index.htm?cnn=yes

$1.65 billion is a lot of change for a web site that hasn't actually made any profit. What's more, YouTube wasn't just the biggest dog in the video sharing industry, it was practically the only one. The only other big website for searchable videos I can recall is GoogleVideo...

I'm not sure if Google has any strategic importance in YouTube. I imagine at this point it's going on the mantlepiece.

As vast and unfiltered as the World Wide Web is, it's still subject to the free market and that means consolidation. There's a rumor about Facebook being sought by Yahoo. I hate to say it, but facts are facts: the Facebook guys can (and probably will) make a complete and utter fortune from selling the site one day. While the Internet is getting bigger, the vast majority of that increase seems to be owned or at least influenced by the same few, big names.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40076

posted by tromano @ 9:10 PM