janssen@titan.sw.mcc.com (Bill Janssen) (11/10/88)
The CBS thing sounds like a pretty typical network news story, slanted any way that fits to give it a little pizazz. (Look at the ratings on "60 Minutes"...) But what about the future of news reporting? Following the ARPANET worm this week has been extremely interesting from a news-gathering standpoint. The stories are submitted by principals and are only hours old (in RISKS). As the future becomes more deeply netted, in all kinds of businesses, on CompuServe and GEnie and Usenet and BIX and so on, perhaps news stories will be submitted to bulletin boards by people on the scene at the time. Personal editing programs may become as normal as current news-reader programs are, to arrange one's own personal newspaper or (why not video?) TV news each day from a multiplicity of news sources. By, say, 1998? Anyone know if the MIT Media Lab is still running their Personal Newspaper (name?). Of course, this (if true) means that network news will continue to worsen, turning more and more into entertainment to attract an audience share. This in turn will mean that the part of the populace that is not "on-line" will receive increasingly inaccurate information (though things like "USA Today -- the TV SHOW!" make me wonder if that hasn't already reached a nadir...) Bill
wetter@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Pierce T. Wetter) (11/11/88)
> (though things like "USA Today -- the TV SHOW!" make me wonder if that > hasn't already reached a nadir...) I've actually watched the show once. Its not that bad. You would expect that since USA Today has almost no real news the TV show would be a wimpy TV news show. Its not. It simply comes across as the standard news show (after all, how could a TV news show have LESS hard news in it.) Then again, how many TV news shows do we actually need? Pierce -- ____________________________________________________________________________ You can flame or laud me at: wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu or wetter@csvax.caltech.edu or pwetter@caltech.bitnet (There would be a witty saying here, but my signature has to be < 4lines)