Sex, Drugs, and Mantyhouse? Aka a Big News Day over at CNN

Often, when I talk about NowPublic with folks who have never seen our web site, they tend to bring up the same set of concerns regarding the accuracy of our content ("if anyone can publish anything, and omg they aren't trained journalists...) and the quality of the content ("is it people writing about their 9 cats?).

These are obvious and logical concerns to bring up – in fact, I’d be shocked if they *didn’t* ask about them and how we address these issues, it’s about as standard a question these days as, “what’s your business model”. imho, while we have a lot of work ahead of us (there is always room for improvement, and we are working our buts off this summer with some cool releases in the pipeline - including one this Monday!) the NowPublic site, and in particular YOU and our community, do an amazing job addressing these concerns with our flagging moderation systems, by reading and following our news values and j-tips for quality in reporting, etc.). 

But, all to often I’m amazed in these conversations about the misperception that if a big media company like CNN reports on a topic it's therefore accurate, "news worthy" (which is a highly individualistic concept), *and* important. Well, I couldn’t resist posting this b/c the homepage of CNN really made me chuckle this morning.

It must be a slow news day today - you know we only have a few major wars going on, including a brand new one in Georgia, not to mention the softball lobbed their way yesterday (aka the John I’m not running for pres. anymore, so why do you care about me Edwards Sex “Scandal”), and the Big Mac dying so young…. and… Olympics/China, and… or, maybe CNN is trying to spice things up with a little variety? The stories featured on their home page atm (see photo) include gems like "mantyhose gives guys warmth and support", "hooters serves up neutering message", and "kid tattoo artist charges $5 for inking".

These headline are only topped by the spam messages I’m getting today from some jackass pretending to be CNN (like the fake email news alert I got from earlier about “Obama’s gay confession” linking to some malware site trying to install lord knows what on my computer – yeah I clicked – had to).

Maybe this spammer got a hold of their front page too?