On the Web, users can assemble their own newscast from an around-the-clock buffet of options, making anchors seem somewhat superfluous, especially to younger viewers. Perhaps as a result, station layoffs are in the news almost every day now, said Tom Petner, who edits the television industry newsletter ShopTalk.
This reminds me of Sunstein's Republic.com 2.0, in which the author discusses the concept of the "Daily Me," the hypothetical online newspaper of tomorrow custom-tailored to each and every individual reader. Sunstein also discusses the important of TV news anchors in providing diversity in the news people get and warns of the danger of a world in which everybody sees only the news he or she wants to see.
The article also discusses other ways the news industry has had to make cutbacks to keep up with online news and blogs. Television news stations have cut back in the behind-the-scenes production crews. Newspaper is also suffering; thousands of newspaper journalists across the country have already lost their jobs. Just as Winograd & Hais predicted in Millennial Makeover, online news and blogs are beginning to replace television as America's primary source of news. Although I expected these changes to occur as more and more Millennials reached adulthood and took positions of authority, I didn't expect them to occur so quickly!
Works Cited
Stelter, Brian. "A Generation of Local TV Anchors is Signing Off." The New York Times. 30 Nov. 2008. 1 Dec. 2008
Sunstein, Cass. Republic.com 2.0. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Winograd, Morley and Michael Hais. Millennial Makeover. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 2008.
1 comment:
the internet accelerates everything, it goes without saying. Information travels so quickly that you kind of have to specialize if you want to remain sane while web surfing. Honestly, im kind of surprised that it took this long. I mean add companies have been tracking the sites people go to and displaying items that might be of interest for years, and sites like amazon immediately show you a list of items that other people bought every time you even look at an item. I wonder what the implications of this will actually be though. I think Sunstien was a bit...over the top, but he made an intereting point. It will be intersting to see what happens.
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