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By Marisa Petrich
The age of the newspaper as we know it has ended—and it’s being ushered out the door by its former readers.
On Oct. 28, The Christian Science Monitor announced that it will be the first major publication to discontinue its daily print edition in favor of an online format, and with lay-offs sweeping print publications nationwide, eyes are increasingly turning to the World Wide Web and the changing nature of news media.
Social media sites allow their audiences to interactively consume information—that is to say, the news is no longer a one-way street. But the Internet has gone beyond inviting the public into the conversation. It now allows average viewers to create and define news on their own terms.
However, whether or not the user-driven model of news is positive is up for debate. While Drew Curtis, creator of Fark.com, admits that the Internet has created a major shift in media, he’s not so sure it’s headed in the right direction.
“The wisdom of crowds is a misnomer,” he said in a phone interview. “Crowds are hungry, horny, and stupid.”
Curtis would know. Fark.com, which invites users to post ridiculous stories produced by the mass media with their own humorous headlines attached, has more than 500,000 registered users and roughly 2.5 million hits a day. The site’s tagline, “It’s not news: It’s Fark”, refers to the odd, pointless or silly stories that find their way into credible, mainstream news sources—more often than not to fill time in the 24-hour news cycle.
“People treat real news like the exercise bike in their basement,” Curtis said. “They’ve got it, but they don’t really do anything about it.”
The bottom line is: it doesn’t matter how good a story is if no one reads it—and if no one is reading a publication, no one is buying ad space in it. So, the stories that are popular are the ones that dominate the headlines.
In short, Curtis finds the viewing audience to be as much to blame for the lack of quality news produced as the outlets that devote endless space to celebrity gossip and obvious stories. He also noted that the average Internet users stick to surfing sites they know they like and opinions they already agree with.
“It’s impossible to get people interested in news that they just don’t care about,” Curtis said. “Real news is a killer act when it is important… the bad news is you can’t build a business plan around that.”
But the masses don’t always influence news content by what they choose to follow. Sites that encourage “citizen journalism” allow individuals to literally make the news.
Included in this group is Current TV. Both a television channel and a website (www.current.com), Current hails itself as “a global television network that gives you the opportunity to create and influence what airs on TV.”
The site allows users to post and comment on stories from other news sources, or to upload videos (pods) they have created themselves. This content is managed by the site’s editors and, in some cases, used later on the organization’s TV channel. In this sense, contributors are still held to a certain standard of accuracy, without being trained as journalists.
The creators do agree with Curtis on one thing—you can’t create interest in the audience that simply isn’t there. Emphasizing personal viewpoints and stories told in the first person, Current is about “what’s going on in your world: all the things you and your friends are actually interested in,” according to the site’s description.
Members create upload pods about everything from salsa dancing to the Iraq War. Certain collaborative efforts fall under the category Collective Journalism, or CJ, in which the site’s editorial board compiles content from users the world over in one segment.
Like it or not, the ability to find and publicize news is no longer the sole responsibility of the journalist. And, while Curtis may insist that the average person does not question his or her world, he has to admit “people that are interested in finding out new stuff are going to have a blast.”