After all, this space is used to discuss life’s rich scenery from a different perspective. And with the Internet, that perspective is no longer locally based, as readers from the other side of the world can now read the same things as you, but through the lens of a culture foreign.
Years ago, if you were living in another country, you would hunt your home news down by turning on the TV, or trek around trying to find an international newsstand. Nowadays, you just download the local news from thousands of miles away right onto your mobile phone or various computers - in a matter of clicks.
Either way, you would be influenced by where you are, in what you read. For example, reading about climate change inside a hermetically sealed Washington office tower is a different experience than reading the same news while sitting near the banks of the Bagmati, and wishing that this particular river would just hurry up and dry up. And conversely, reading about American health care reform while sitting in the emergency room of Patan hospital may give you a different perspective as well. All this and more is now possible with Wi-Fi.
Most days I sit in front of Firefox (for what seems like hours) and read The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and The Sacramento Bee –and for anything that I might have missed, I go to Slate.com. I can imagine that Nepalis abroad do a similar thing, only they are reading Republica, The Himalayan Times, The Kathmandu Post, Nepali Times, and then perhaps Cybersansar.com for everything else.
But whatever the situation, the reader can now post back their agreement or disagreement all in a way never before seen. For example, take any op-ed in The New York Times where there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of posts from fired-up readers, but who in the heck has time to read all those personal outbursts?
Or in the case of news sites like Slashdot.com, the comments are read far more often than the original submission, as most folks don’t read the article at all; they just comment on the comments on the comments...to no end it seems.
It seems to me that the news of the day has not changed so much, but we just comment more on it.
The articles that I commented on this week included “Photoshoped BP emergency response meetings discovered!” – a photo essay showing how software was used to improve the image of the company and make it look like BP was doing more than just floundering in their attempt to cap an oil spill gone mad. Other comments where on topics such as the Russian donkey that went parasailing, asteroids hitting Neptune, and on Mel Gibson having a meltdown and screaming hysterically at his girlfriend over his cell phone.
The content gamut is wide these days. Perhaps too wide, as these are things that I would have never considered reading about in the days before World Link. The news back then could always wait until the weekend, or delivered in sound bites on the 5 o’clock evening news. I was never so interested in things like “climate changes marmot migration” as I am now, that I am plugged in 24 hours a day.
Being a newspaper writer is also much different these days. Back in the day, a writer would submit their words and then forget about them, and perhaps read the printed article once to see if the typos had been removed, and then move on. Now a writer can expect to be trolled, flamed, or flame-baited in the comments section. I even get a few personal emails, like “wtf” or “I agree” and every once in awhile someone asks me for relationship advice.
So the world has changed, or has it? It seems to me that the news of the day has not changed so much, but we just comment more on it. In addition to talking to a friend or co-worker about current events, we Tweet it, we DiGG it, we Skype it, we Facebook it, we email it - we do lots more with news now that we have a netbook in our bag. Surely this must be having an impact on... something? It would be a shame to think that the 16 billion minutes spent globally on Facebook each day was a complete waste of time.
Perhaps things have changed for the worse...from where we used to put serious thought into the news of the day, and then perhaps were motivated to change the sordid state of affairs, to instead, now just posting a 123-character comment and leaving it at that. Done. Move on to the next blog...
When I was a young I would sit with the newspaper under a summer tree and just gaze over the crinkled pages and out over the world where all this stuff was happening, questioning or filling in the space between the margins - all to the tune of crickets and wind in the trees. Even reading the adverts and dreaming of wrist radios and becoming an astronaut. Now I can hardly hear myself think over the clacking of my keyboard and Internet radio, and in-between updates, alerts and the pings all flashing up on the screen.
Heck, I even simultaneously listen to Internet talk radio and network news while I am reading online. But I have always been a news junkie, and regardless of technology, I still see the media-at-large as grand entertainment.
So what about you? Have you changed as the press has changed...do you comment online? You tell me–please see the comment box below :).
(Writer is quirky kinda expat happily living in the Kathmandu valley with Nepali family, friends, and a very large dog – who are all getting their news online.)
herojig@gmail.com
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