[student name deleted]
CSC442B Fall 2008
The Internet and American Life
Paper One
News at the Speed of the Internet
According to legend, news of the defeat of the Persian forces by the Athenians in 490 B.C. at
the Battle of Marathon took several hours to reach Athens. The messenger carrying this news ran 25
miles and then promptly died upon giving his important news.(1) In contrast, American Airlines Flight
77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37:46 AM ET during the terrorist attacks upon the United States on
September 11, 2001 (2). CNN had a live report from the scene at 9:42 AM ET (3), a mere 5 minutes
after the event. Before the Internet, news was a one-way medium with limited formats and sources.
After slightly more than 15 years after the popular advent of the Internet, news is now bi-directional,
multi-modal and comes from a variety of sources. This change in the fundamentals of news reporting
has significantly impacted my life by satisfying my personal need for frequent and varied information
about local and world events. I will explain how the Internet has allowed me to fundamentally change
the way in which I consume news. From a young age, I was always voracious consumer of news from
many mediums including television, radio, newspapers and magazines. In addition, I am an early
Internet technology adopter and I publish my own blog. I will explain the sources of information from
which I receive information, the tools that I use to receive it, the frequency with which I do so and my
ability to publicly comment upon and analyze this news.
The volume and diversity of news sources on the Internet has permitted me to keep up-to-date
on almost any area or aspect of the world that I wish. In general, I have always kept informed on
events happening in multiple realms ranging from local/regional events to sports to international news.
Before the rise of the Internet, I received local news once a day from the regional newspaper and in the
evening from the nightly news. These forms of news consumption do have a visceral appeal – a sort of
comforting washing over of information. From Victoria Riggen’s post to the CSC442 Paper One
discussion forum, many people including her are content to consume news on television only and
would miss it if it were gone (4). Victoria references a Pew Research Center for People and the Press
report stating that “Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) say they would miss these broadcasts a lot if they were
no longer available." (5) On the other hand, I have gladly abandoned almost all television-based news.
Based upon this report, I would be considered a “Net-Newser” in the vernacular of the report. This is
evidenced by my particular appetite for national and political news, political blogs and the fact that I
read more news as the day continues. For local news, I access the Orlando Sentinel newspaper website
and WFTV website, one of the local television stations in Central Florida. At an even more local level,
our community of East Orlando has a local interest newspaper titled the East Orlando Sun. This
weekly online newspaper is a valuable resource for me to find out about my community. In fact, I
place equal or more trust in local online sources than printed one and my viewpoint seems to be a trend
on the Internet as a whole. According to a Pew Research Center for People and the Press from 2007,
32% of primarily Internet news consumers have an unfavorable opinion of local TV news as compared
to only 22% for primarily newspaper and 16% for primarily TV users.(6)
Another change in the sources of my news consumption is the ability to access sources that I
previously would not have been able to access. Two such sources are the Wall Street Journal and the
Daily Mail in the UK. The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page publishes a daily blog called “The Best
of the Web” written by James Taranto. I became a regular reader of this blog during the 2004 elections
and have read it almost daily since then. This column and the paper as a whole is very important to my
ability to stay informed, but I would likely not subscribe to the physical paper at $99 per year fee.
