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During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Editor's Note
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The future Where the medium is the Internet A colleague of mine says we might finally object to fast-growing technology when the chip in our brain becomes hard to shut off and we say, “Enough is enough.” If you think back to those millennium celebrations just a few years ago (Dec. 31, 1999 or, for the purists, Dec. 31, 2000), there was no myspace.com – website social clubs meant nothing to Americans – and emails were few. We could breathe just seven years ago and the Internet was fast becoming a useful family tool. So much for happy endings: The Internet is the medium of today and the challenge for tomorrow. In the past year, we’ve written extensively about the Internet’s power, considering it the most mind-expanding innovation since the Gutenberg Press, as well as a downright dangerous place. And the old medium of media is at risk: The San Diego Union-Tribune is looking for buyouts to cut staff, following a similar action by the Orange County Register, and the Tribune Co. may sell the Los Angeles Times or downsize it into oblivion. Why pay for the news if you can get it for free? Parents wouldn’t be so worried if the end result of a child’s natural curiosity was in a Google search of, say, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. But that is not so. We now have to guard computer access the way we guarded unlocked gun drawers. We’re all in danger of becoming overwired, and undereducated. As much as I am concerned about capturing the 285,000 local residents ages 18-24 who need this magazine, I am more concerned about the nearly 600,000 local residents ages 5-17 who may never bother. According to Cox Communications, 61% of 13- to 17-year-olds have a personal profile on an online social website. They would rather talk to Bob or Ginny than learn a stock table. Newspapers really have felt the effect of being yesterday’s news. When something happens now, you can view it on YouTube long before the presses start rolling. It is the natural reaction of a world’s move toward becoming equal parts narcissistic and voyeuristic. The whole world wants to share, and print journalists now need to learn how to share back, to play a reasoned role in the new media. The challenge is that a good news story doesn’t play to a narcissist or a voyeur because it is not about them but about how things work, how parents parent, why Pluto is what it is. Like blogs, much of what’s out there is unedited and, therefore, unfiltered, seemingly mean-spirited, often wrong or overly biased. With 60 million iPods (and that’s not counting this holiday’s sales) and membership to MySpace topping 100 million, who has time to open a newspaper? Journalism is the first draft of history. The Internet’s growing aisle of mindlessness threatens to diminish the non-reader of the future, where truth is stranger than fiction. Craig Reem Executive Editor |
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