Tuesday 23 June 2009

The web. Saviour or Satan

I love the web. I use it every day. I am pretty much fucked if I don't get access to a lap top. It's a bit like when I first had a mobile and thought of something and could instantly call a mate and tell him about it.
With the web - think a thought and google it, brilliant.
But is it the future of journalism? Our retard bosses think so and I think I have earlier covered adequately why.
But think about the web. How many sites do you actually visit on a daily basis? Even on a weekly basis? Sure my favourites list is populated with at least 70-80 sites that I think I need to know about.
But daily I look at my newspaper websites, my opposition websites, Facebook (natch) BBC (shit hyperlocal by the way you over paid fuck hounds) HTFP, Fleet street blues, Press Gazette (although I wonder why I bother) Mediaguardian (get more local paper coverage you sandal wearing hippies) and clearly some porn.
Weekly even less. Sometimes I think about spring cleaning my favourites - but sometimes I think about cutting down on drinking too.
Google alerts fill my email basket with all the news I feel I need. The rest of my daily shit comes from whatever I google (or Bing if we really have to go down that copycatted soul sucking Microsoft thieving route - how much money do you need Bill Gates!!).
So, as a self confessed internet nut I visit less than a dozen sites daily. And, if they are not updated regularly, I spend less than half an hour doing it.
So how can the internet be the future?
Now clearly, if you are reading this, you read blogs. And if you like piss poor ones, you have found a home. But this ain't journalism. This is cant, rhetoric, drivel, rant. Opinion not fact. NOT NEWS.
Is this our future? I love news and I love getting and disseminating news and the internet can be the perfect tool.
My point - and I think I have one - is, with most web users looking at a handful of sites each day, will your news stories still mean the same as they do when you present it in a newspaper with the mix and balance and design we spend hours on each day?
Or will it become a google alert that a reader doesn't even bother to open because you aready read the first par.
More on the web another day.....my head is hurting thinking about it!

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