fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (07/06/88)
In the referenced article, stone@nbc1.UUCP (Anthony Stone) writes:
[most journalists are already too overloaded with stuff to
read, and USENET would simply make that worse]
I used to work at a television station in Austin, KVUE,
which is still on the net and some of its news producers
read the net occasionally and have even gotten story ideas
from it. But I think Usenet is still predominately technical
enough that it more of a sociological curiosity than a
source of news to general interest journalists.
Ah, yes! I remember you. KVUE was one of Dual Systems' customers from
long ago. Good to see you're still on the net.
Actually, the traffic in numbers of messages (not bytes) is pretty
evenly split between the "rec" category and the "comp" category;
if you're taking "inet", comp is on top, and if not, rec is on top.
In this sense, the network has lost its strictly technical focus
(lost it in early 1986), although I concede that it is still
primarily technical people talking about non-technical subjects.
Of course, technically educated people are ideal for generating
truly insightful and enlightened debate on the topics of the day,
right? :-)
On the other hand, USENET's value to any journalist covering (or
pretending to cover) the computer industry is obvious. To the extent
that we can get such journalists on-line and (with luck) better
educated by the professionals in the field so they don't make quite
so many boneheaded mistakes when they write their articles, having
journalists on the USENET is a good thing. Watching the press
explain the current rash of viruses has been most interesting (or
horrifying, if your mind works that way), particularly in that
they've pretty consistently confused viruses with trojan horses,
logic bombs, and a whole host of other, tangentially-related computer
security risks. This isn't the only example of the press screwing up
the reporting of events in the computer industry, either.
On a slightly related topic (particularly related to the information
overload problem that Anthony alluded to) I wonder: has anyone ever
tried to gateway a real newswire service (e.g. AP/NYT, UPI, Reuters,
etc.) into netnews for their own local use? (I realize that newswire
contracts are most specific about prohibitions on further redistribution
of the material that they provide without explicit permission).
I had a look about a year ago at UPI's extended ANPA standard
(just a quick technical overview, no real details) and it seemed
to me that they had analogues of newsgroups, message-IDs, even an
equivalent of a "cancel" control message (or a Supersedes: header),
and that the job of gatewaying would be pretty easy. Netnews even
has a time-based expire to get rid of old articles before your disk
fills up with yesterday's news.
Our user interfaces have a somewhat problematic paradigm though:
they all want to show you everything new in a category, and given
the amount of traffic that a newswire represents, stronger filters
would be needed. How would you structure and then filter netnews
if there were an order of magnitude (10x) more of it?
One more thought: anyone interested in organizing a wire service
(volunteer or otherwise) for USENET? That is, when any of you go
to an event that might be of national (or international) interest,
why not write it up, and post your article to the net? Be liberal in
your interpretation of "what might be of interest" too - you never
know what the estimated 224,000 USENET readers might be interested in,
and who knows? We might be able to paint a more accurate picture of
what's going on around us than the traditional media do now...
Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edudan@ccnysci.UUCP (Dan Schlitt) (07/07/88)
I want to back up what Erik says about the benefits that would come from more journalists reading USENET. And agree with a previous writer that they won't because they already have too much information to keep track of. In my experience it also takes a bit of explaination to get them to understand the significance of a lot of technically oriented information. I base this on my personal experience. A very good friend is the editorial page editor of a modest sized daily. (The editorial page staff is two people.) I frequently passed on copies of articles from sources such as PHYSICS TODAY and ACM publications which I thought would interest him. (This was when I lived in the same city he does and saw him several times a week.) I didn't have access to USENET then so I didn't pass on things from that source. Now that I live half a country away I send him less, but there are many articles from USENET which I have printed out and mailed to him over the last year. The result was frequently a long conversation about the significance of the information which touched on lots of related issues. Now it is a telephone call. Sometimes something appeared on the editorial page and sometimes not, but the level of comment on technical issues on that editorial page is well above average. In a technophobic society I think that this sort of activity is a professional responsibility. It is too bad that almost the only contact elected officials, journalists, and the like have with technical folk is when we are promoting something.
webber@aramis.rutgers.edu.UUCP (07/13/88)
In article <844@ccnysci.UUCP<, dan@ccnysci.UUCP (Dan Schlitt) writes:
< I want to back up what Erik says about the benefits that would come
< from more journalists reading USENET.
Gee, sounded more like Erik wanted us all to become journalists -- a
slightly different matter. Me, I'll do weather reports (just a sec,
.... today there is weather, all over the eastern seaboard -- as is
well known, in alt.california they only have climate).
< In a technophobic society I think that this sort of activity is a
< professional responsibility. It is too bad that almost the only
< contact elected officials, journalists, and the like have with
< technical folk is when we are promoting something.
You mean like when we are trying to make sure that they understand
that the computer is their friend?
---- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)