The Internet has become media source #1 for many
September 3, 2005 by Mike Wendland
Just how important the Internet has become as a news source was brought home for me this morning by my wife. We’re down in Albany, GA, this Labor Day Weekend, visiting our son and daughter-in-law and the grandkids. “Whatever happened to the newspaper?” asked Jennifer as she saw my daughter-in-law and me, seated on opposite sides of their family room sofa, both on our own laptops catching up on the latest on Hurricane Katrina.
The TV was on, too, with CNN, I think. But both of us had seen all the images before.
On the Net, we were surfing different sites. I was chasing down reports of gas shortages as we need to head home tomorrow night. Lauri was reading accounts from refugees (Did anyone ever think we’d hear the term refugee referring to our own countrymen?)
A little earlier, she had received an e-mail from her Sunday School class at church. About 80 refugee families from the Gulf States had arrived in Albany and churches were coordinating via e-mail clothing and food donations.
My son’s family doesn’t subscribe to a newspaper. Their TV shows more kids programs than anything else. But I believe Scott and Lauri are probably better informed than most people. The Internet is pretty much their exclusive news source. They like the freedom it gives them to dig deeply into stories that interest or concern them and they want the immediacy of not having to wait for news to be delivered the next day in a printed newspaper or to show up on a TV news show. And with so many sites now offering streaming broadband video reports, there is no need to suffer through all the TV commercials.
I suspect they are not alone.
Oops. I’m typing this from the shade of the back porch, underneath a big fan that stirs the hot and humid Deep South air, accessing his wi-fi network.
Scott just IMed me. Time to head inside for a glass of lemonade.
I agree completely Mike. I write this as I sit on the gazebo on back deck with a laptop on my wireless network. In addition to digging deeper into stories I get to see information from infinitely more sources and the process also becomes interactive. I can comment and ask questions and communicate with all kinds of people that I don’t know and will likely never meet. I can also express my own opinions through my blog and with links to other sites I can spread and expand upon the things I have learned. All of this happens almost in real time. It is very much a live process as opposed to the old days when a person might write a letter to the editor and then maybe days or weeks later see it printed if at all. Now a comment can potentially spawn a lively conversation among disparate individuals in a matter of minutes or hours. Dave Winer has written on his blog of asking a question about something on the blog and litterally receiving dozens of responses within minutes of posting it. The net is the most vibrant and wide ranging discussion in human history and I am thrilled to be a part of it not just a passive observer (although that is OK too if that is what you like).
Mike,
Check out this blog;
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/
It is by a guy that runs a webhosting service in New Orleans. He never evacuated and continues to run off backup generator power. It is a great read.
Right on. My wife and I found we just weren’t reading the daily newspaper any more, so about a month ago we cancelled all except the Sunday edition. I get 99.9% of my news & info off the web now.
I never watch tv news. I haven’t even turned on a tv for coverage of Katrina.
I too crossed over from TV to internet news. It started with the war in Iraq. Apart from the Vietnam War I learned so much more about this current war via internet news than any other. I cancelled my home delivery newspaper about three years ago and now read online newspapers, daily, from different US cities, and also from different countries around the world