Books Jan 14, 2010 at 4:00 am

What Google Has Done to Life on Earth

Comments

1
I agree that subsidization will make news more accessible, but I wonder how people would react to the idea of a free and fair media that's being somewhat funded by its benefactor.
2
I came across and interesting experiment and wrote about it on my blog the other day:
http://thirdplacepress.blogspot.com/2010…

Essentially, a journalist, frustrated at not getting her work published, takes matters into her own hands. Cue: the future of news...
3
Paul, what you would know about "what a good newspaper should be"? The Stranger's incessant Times-bashing is so churlish. Travel around the country a little and you'll see that our local paper is far, far better than most.
4
Paul, what you would know about "what a good newspaper should be"? The Stranger's incessant Times-bashing is so churlish. Travel around the country a little and you'll see that our local paper is far, far better than most.
5
Yes, content is "free" on the Internet - once you get there. Accessing the Internet is never free (the public library has to pay for their access too,) so basically the money has shifted from the creators of content to ISPs. The $50 I pay Comcast every month should help pay for the content I view once I get there. Somehow I don't think Comcast would agree, but it would be ideal to see the compensation more evenly distributed. And no, I don't have a clue as to what that will look like. Maybe that guy in the garage does?
6
@3: "Better than most" is still an insult when you're talking about American newspapers. I've traveled around the country. Hell, I've traveled to Portland, and the Oregonian makes the Times look like Seattle Gay News. Likewise the Boston Globe, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and a half-dozen others I could name off the top of my head. Even Maine's Portland Press Herald is better than the Seattle Times.

Just because our paper does a marginally better job than some AP aggregator in Lincoln, Nebraska isn't a cause for celebration.
7
As it stands, most 'news' sources are little more than gossip rags. Frankly, their dissapearance is not a tragedy in any way. No real discussion takes place and many issues are dumbed down to the point that their portrayal no longer resembles the origional idea.

We do not need another governmentally funded program designed to keep afloat a system that no longer works.
8
Cleveland? Portland, Oregon? Portland, Maine? Now I know you're blurry-eyed with your childish, churlish venom towards the Times, Paul. Ask any journalist for a major metro -- any one who sees any of these papers regularly -- and they will tell you differently.
9
As a former practicing author and journalist (I had to start doing something else for a living around the turn of the century) I'm a firm believer that the Web hurt serious journalism.

Print journalism isn't easily duplicated; online content is very easy to duplicate and edit. People have no shame about copying and pasting content they didn't create, which hurts the content creators' ability to make a living.

The culture of getting information for free hurts a lot, too. Why does "information need to be free", if I put weeks or months of my time into investigating and creating it?

The situation can't be reversed, but the upshot is that news sites will continue their trend of being mainly gossip sites--something easy to write and popular to read--if people won't pay for serious content.
10
As a former practicing author and journalist (I had to start doing something else for a living around the turn of the century) I'm a firm believer that the Web hurt serious journalism.

Print journalism isn't easily duplicated; online content is very easy to duplicate and edit. People have no shame about copying and pasting content they didn't create, which hurts the content creators' ability to make a living.

The culture of getting information for free hurts a lot, too. Why does "information need to be free", if I put weeks or months of my time into investigating and creating it?

The situation can't be reversed, but the upshot is that news sites will continue their trend of being mainly gossip sites--something easy to write and popular to read--if people won't pay for serious content.
11
This is a FANTASTIC article. Two things bother me about Google and they make me avoid it as much as possible. 1- as a person who almost never watches advertising, I find I'm now obligated to click on the little "x" to close ads that obscure what I'm searching for. I resent that these clicks are generating income for some slimy fuckwad in advertising.

2- my account is bombarded with ads that prove that my IP number is being somehow tracked by a marketing program - EVEN WHEN I'M NOT LOGGED IN. How does Google know that I am an amputee and have a prosthesis? I have never accessed amputee related sites through my account. This is offensive and invasive.

I've developed a few surfing strategies that allow me to avoid using Google but I won't share them here as I don't want Google to invade and screw them up. (Yahoo is no better in my opinion, BTW)
12
@8: I have no idea what you're talking about now. Are you calling those papers worse than the Times? Because I disagree. But that last comment doesn't make any sense.
13
As a rule, I find the Times to be on the conservative/wrong side of issues LONG after they've lost the argument (see increased parking rates, for a recent example). Additionally, I find that even the most progressive/liberal of the Times writers are woefully out of touch with the needs and resources of people with incomes less than upper-middle class (ie, people that don't want to wast good money on a newspaper like the Seattle Times just to feel well-educated and urbane). Just see Danny Westneat's defense of summer vacation to get a feeling for the kind of world people at the Times live in. (No offense intended to Mr. Westneat, but seriously - just because your kids benefit from summer vacation does NOT make the existence of summer vacation a net benefit).
14
^^ The first sentence above isn't to say that the Times are never on the winning side, just that they are slow, sore losers, and that they are overly conservative in the positions they promote to the point that their reports often seem to border on propaganda and/or misinformation.

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.