emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (06/12/89)
Usenet news has made its way into the real news every once in a while. Here's a short list of incidents, please add on any that come to mind. - soc.culture.china. I heard a piece on the BBC shortwave this weekend, with a telephone interview from Toronto and a description of the network as a major force in coordinating efforts in China. The best piece I've heard on it so far; most of the domestic accounts botch up the name of the group or don't associate it with usenet. - rec.humor.funny. The flaps at Stanford and Waterloo, apparently now resolved at Stanford with a library committee's report favoring the restoration of the group. I recall this being botched a number of times as well, with references to the group as a "file" and uncertainty about exactly how the network/group was organized. - sci.physics/alt.fusion. Prominent press coverage, in good measure because the word on the net was most of the story. Excerpts from several articles made national news wires, and Donn Seeley made it onto Utah television. - comp.protocols.tcp-ip. During the Internet Worm crisis, a colleague of the (alleged) author of the worm posted a warning to this Internet mailing list and news group which was stuck in the mail queue for hours because of the worm. Had he known about NNTP, there might have been a few more hours of time to fight the worm. This incident didn't focus much on netnews as much as the network it travels on. Lots of people made it onto local TV. As far as I've been able to see or read, no group has tied together all four incidents and identified a common thread between them. I was somewhat surprised and quite happy to hear the report on the BBC, though that was of course tempered by the horrible events which have been the result. This list doesn't include any of the reporting on usenet that goes on in the specialized press of computer magazines -- that's usually much more focussed on the contents of the discussion, not the medium as a whole. News.misc seemed to be the most appropriate group, please direct comments here. --Ed