Tech & Biz

The Kids Just Want to Share: News in the New Century

by Jordan Yerman | April 2, 2008 at 02:15 pm

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Thanks, Techdirt, for validating my existence... I happen to agree with the assessments below. Hey, if I'm wrong, I'lll be back down at the very fringe of employment. Again.

In an interesting followup to our earlier post about the state of the news business, Robin writes in to point us to a NY Times article all about how a younger generation of news readers now focus on sharing the news, rather than just consuming it. Mathew Ingram highlights the key sentence in the article, from a college student: "If the news is that important, it will find me." Very few mainstream publications have grasped that concept, even if some folks have been saying the same thing for years. It's time for those in the newspaper business to stop thinking of readers as straight consumers. They're distributors, promoters, creators and analysts of the news as well.

I'll let the analysts aregue over whether or not today's yoof are self-centered or not, but the larger picture is increasingly clear: new media's real gift to users is the ability to talk back to the screen, even if it's just a chance to comment in a comment box. I'm certainly responsible for several whiskey-fuelled responses to online articles throughout the interwebs, and, yes, it does make me feel better!

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Rob Peters

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 15:18 on April 2nd, 2008

I agree with the assessments as well. The posting function on Facebook, which is used primarily for sharing news, seems to be gaining in popularity, for example. I think it's because there's a social aspect to it--you feel more connected somehow, even when it's just a forwarded wire article from a friend.