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p2p news / p2pnet: “A weblog or blog (derived from web + log) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally, but not always, in reverse chronological order),” says Wikipedia.
Given their increasing importance as communications vehicles, it’s no surprise that politicians of all stripes are now riding them hard as they try to get to surfers. And one of the latest to try to jump the wave is Denny Hastert, speaker of the US House of Representatives.
“This is new to me,” he says. “I can’t say I’m much of a techie. I guess you could say my office is teaching the old guy new tricks. But I’m excited. This is the future.”
He got that right.
‘News’ sites, owned by the big corporate print and electronic outlets, have gone from mainstream to mainscream to lamescream with Hastert’s page being typical of self-serving sites on the far end of the spectrum, and destined stay in that distant position.
Pushing the traditional media aside, and gaining more and more power and credibility as they do so, are the blogs we created so we can share with each other what we, and not the korporate klans, believe we all need to know.
Information from ordinary people for ordinary people in a kind of data blast. Individuals post and potentially, thousands of others people read the results, passing them on to thousands of other people.
P2P. Peer-to-peer. Person to person. People to people.
Fair and balanced coverage
Once upon a time, reporters reported. They didn’t comment. That function was mainly the territory of columnists and OpEd and feature writers. Reporting meant providing fair and balanced coverage of events: both sides of the story. But not any more. Today, 99.9% of the major international print and electronic media outlets are owned and/or controlled by elements of the entertainment cartels, with diverse vested interests lurking in the background. They don’t report, they tell. Their stories are all too frequently heavily slanted and highly inaccurate, reading more like press releases than news items, a reality which now also applies to the major wires which used to reliable and scrupulously fair.
Enter blogs, produced by anyone with access to a Net account and enough intelligence to figure out how to use one of the many free blogging applications that are available online. And enter the new journalism.
Blogs are usually unabashedly on one side or another. They exist to provide information, not control it. Balance comes because readers have a choice.
Of course, the corporations are going blue, desperately offering glitzed up, smooth-talking super-blogs, hoping to swamp the alternate news sites. But they’re too late. Every day, more and more people open Net accounts to discover information, which used to be highly restricted and tightly regulated, is now freely available.
Before the Net, hard-core industry organizations ruled, using the media as propaganda and dis- and misinformation vehicles. With their immense political and financial power, they decided what you’d see and hear. And what you’d believe.
Those days are gone forever.
“We want some answers and you folks out there in the blogosphere do too,” says Hastert on his blog. “I guess you could say my office is teaching the old guy new tricks.”
But he still doesn’t get it. We do indeed want the answers, but for the first time in history, we’re getting them because we now have the information at our fingertips.
Until the Net came along, we were isolated from each other. Now we communicate instantly around the world, privately and publicly, comparing and sharing, with all that implies.
Think about it, Mr Hastert. And think about it all you as-yet uncommitted information providers ; )
Jon Newton
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October 30th, 2005 at 8:30 pm
Oh, I much agree Jon. You posted another article yesterday with this reflection echoed. I don’t remember the name of it but it is still on the front page. Corporations have figured out that the iPod crowd now in colleges aren’t listening to lamescream. They aren’t going for the 6 o’clock news, they aren’t listening to radio, they aren’t getting daily newspapers either. Ad companies are desperate to get a toe hold into these potential lost customers. Answer? Buy personal representation as a walking, living billboard with live, on the hoof testimonials.
College kids making money by verbal endorsement of a given product to their peers. Something is seriously wrong with this invasion into what should be closed doors to those out for the buck. It sort of strikes me like the part in the movie Airplane where the pilot is running through the airport, rough handling all those orange robed initiates of a religious sect, to get those out of his path because he is in a hurry.
I always figured that ads were a way of admitting the product being advertised doesn’t live up to its billing. No one needs ads for those products that really work. People tell people what really works. Here that line is dividing. Should I run up on one of those kids being a paid, walking billboard, I assure you I will take it personally as an admission there is something wrong with that product also.
Guess where my personal list of “don’t buys” come from? They come from those products that don’t live up to doing what they say they do satisfactorily. If it takes a lot of the product to do the job because the strength is watered down, think as a customer I might not be able to tell that? If I hear it heavily advertised, I purposely choose another at picking time while standing in front of the shelf at the store. I don’t reward those that want to intrude on my hearing or viewing time with ads. I wish some of the rest of the world got this message and took it to heart. It would set the advertising world on its head and you would no longer see things like ads before a movie starts in a theater.
October 30th, 2005 at 9:28 pm
I apologize to the readers for getting off the subject and on to a rant about the evils and persuasiveness of advertising. It just seems that it goes hand in hand with lamescream. I guess it is part of what I and evidently many others think is wrong with it besides the unadmitted bias that is practiced but not owned up to.
Lamescream is losing this battle for listener and readership. They know it too. There is no other reason for them to attempt invasion into the Internet from their main interest in whatever they do, other than that realization.
Many have already had their 15 minutes of fame. Those 15 minutes didn’t really represent the facts nor did they present an unpartizan viewpoint. For myself I understand this reluctance to talk to the media, especially with something sensitive.
I have long ago dropped out of lamescreams’ radar. I no longer get my news from anywhere but the Internet. I totally dislike the mayhem and evils of society that lamescream seems to think sells. There is a world of good people out there. To hear lamescream day after day would have you think the world is full of perverts and criminals and their are your neighbors. Ever notice how strangers look at each other in the big city? Isn’t the same for the small towns. To me lamescream has a large portion of the blame in this reaction to strangers as they tend to capitalize on this basic human reaction and sensationalize bad news.
Life isn’t all bad news or is it all tradegies. Somehow, predominately that is what hits the news though. If it isn’t being bad to your fellow man or if it isn’t plastered with sex, then it isn’t considered news worthy. I know that life doesn’t consist of evil in those proportions as is represented in lamescream. You should know it too.
October 31st, 2005 at 3:15 am
“If it isn’t being bad to your fellow man or if it isn’t plastered with sex, then it isn’t considered news worthy.”
Well, sex, disaster and drama sell. We all know that’s what mainstream media is all about, including most newspapers and magazines - at least the most consumed ones. See, it’s not about telling the truth anymore, it’s about how you present the news. If it’s shocking, it will sell. Media corporations are so bloated and crushed by their own billions of fictive dollars that their only options are : TO SELL or TO DIE.
They have become greedy and therefore no longer serve any interests than their own - their newspapers have become their own propaganda.
If it was all about reporting news, they would die, because the taller the giant is, the harder is the fall.
You can Google your news for free from tons of international journalists, recognized by mainstream opinion or not. Form your own judgment upon it, because anyway, unless you’re ‘there’ you can never really know what happened, and even then, you would need all the contextual information behind events to be able to really understand them.
October 31st, 2005 at 5:37 am
“Well, sex, disaster and drama sell. We all know that’s what mainstream media is all about, including most newspapers and magazines - at least the most consumed ones.”
Actually many people I talk to, especially older people, would love to have more positive news. All the doom-and-gloom is really depressing. A nice balance of “world events” and “what you can do to make it better / the good things in life” would be the best combination.
October 31st, 2005 at 9:46 am
Maybe a miracle will happen and these pollies will take a look at some real blogs and actually get an idea of what real ppl out there think!!!
Nah.. I’m sure it’d never be allowed.