If you have enough hits to make money from advertiseing, why not do it? Ads are everywhere, just don't endorse them. There is no need to block any you dislike/disagree with.

maybe the googler didn't come back to your table because you seem mean and whiny.

just because a more efficient system is gutting yours doesn't mean the people involved have no soul. things change and evolve. that's life.

as for the "none of it is real" comment, we, to a large extent, define our own reality. by changing how you interpret the world, you can live in a better world.

I think it's true that we need to be "examining ourselves". That has always been true ("know thyself").

Similarly, however, the urge to express one's self has also always been here. You say that "with the Web 2.0 we are so much more willing to spread our selves and our self-infatuations around", an urge that you think started when "we became the leisure society".

Isn't it possible that blogs are today's version of the cave paintings from 40,000 years ago? Scribblings, memories, impressions, our feeble attempts to make sense of a world that is more complex than the world of the hunter gatherer cave dwellers, but with far less mystery?

Regardless of what happens to so-called "traditional media", the ability to make sense of our lives will always be in demand. For that, we will always need artists, poets and writers. Writers like yourself.

Life is short. Screw Google. Write a book (or something).

Yeah - print journalism never had any shills, recycled content, glossy and overproduced magazines, pro-war puff pieces, clueless stenography, outrageous lies, or relentless tech hype. But then... Google arose! Curse you, Google, source of all evil! Why, back before the Web, ad-agency money went to print journalists, where it belonged!

Nice article. I've had several conversations with people about this... Your not alone.

Encylopedia's are off of the kid's wishlists. Anything plug-in, highspeed, w 55,000 songs to download is on the list now.
What I find interesting, is now it is not what we can look up in a book and read and research about a topic, it is all about what wikipedia said it so it must be right. I didn't give my soon to graduate a University daughter anything techy for Christmas, I gave her an Atlas and a good pair of binoculars. Broaden your horizons...but offline.
My retired Professor Mom had a final paper due for students that was book use only. Kudos to her, she demanded her students think for themselves, and learn with footwork included. Though I can google her name and find out where she's giving a lecture these days.
I am the last person on earth who pays for cheap dial-up internet, cannot usually watch You TUbe w/out seeing it all choppy, yet, had to drive 15 miles to find a library with power to pay my online bills per the last storm here.

When I hear an ad for the newest Chocolate, I think, what's better than Godiva or See's or Hershey's? wireless what? is it a phone or silky telecommunication device? does it come with sprinkles, or hazelnuts?

One more thing regarding internet, yeah, I am one who gets all wound up reading 5 things at once and have had to force myself to stop this habit, and am much calmer as a result. I also find it interesting that a blog can keep track of exactly when you turn 47, and I had to see that in print. Damn. Thanks Blogger.

It's easy to strike a misanthropic pose towards the current toy, gizmo,trend, zeitgeist, whatever -- that "the masses" are currently obsessed with -- especially anything that is making someone a lot of money. Capitalism will eat itself, unchecked consumerism is turning America and the rest of the world into materialistic zombies, etc, etc, etc, blah blah blah. You might as well be angry at the sun for setting (am I dabbling in Jeffers? I think so). I would hazard to guess only a recovering narcissist, (are you currently in therapy? Medicated?) would augur such dire portents from all the current cyber navel gazing. Most bloggers do it for a while, then get bored with it or stop out of sudden plain ole embarrassment ("WTF am I doin' this for?"). Substance and Web 2.0 can, in fact, live together. Lots of idiots will write blogs and social network, etc but good writers and thinkers will embrace the technology too. The fact that most people have nothing to say is nothing new. Technology is always in flux, but I reckon' the ratio of fools to heroic free thinkers like yourself is a relative constant.

I'm a recovering net addict. I was recently struck by the thought that what I read online could be broken down into three categories: 1) Poor, half thought out opinion that was a waste of my time. 2) "Content" that merely commented on and linked to news from "normal" news sources. 3) Genuine quality writing in niche subject areas, mostly related to my professional interests.

Categories one and two were by far the type of thing I had spent most of my time reading. Luckily I realized this before I canceled my print subscriptions. I'll still look for category three type content, but avoid the other two as much as possible.

Nice fantasy conversation, it almost sounds real.

I used to work at Google. I never met anyone who treated the "Web 2.0" buzzword seriously. It makes most people gag. Many people carry around engineering logbooks that they scribble in; there is no pretense that paper has been abolished. "Web 2.0" might describe something like Flickr, but even those guys think it's a silly buzzword.

"Web 2.0", the marketing concept, was invented by... wait for it... a print publisher.

Such is the state of print media that most of these engineers and designers (in their 20s and 30s) haven't even *noticed* that they did anything to it. Most of them aren't even aware that newspapers and magazines are supposed to carry interesting, relatively unbiased, timely information.

Consolidation had taken its toll in the 80s-00s. Newspapers stopped funding quality local journalism, and relied on their local monopolies for certain types of ads. Then the internet came along and they were dead. Don't blame the engineers.

The average startup owner is about a hundred times more idealistic than the bean-counters they have running the newspapers and magazines these days.

And that is why, I have to ask you, where are *your* balls? Your profession has had twenty to thirty years to revolt against being dumbed down, and you've done almost nothing but complain.

I disagree with your implication that drivel on the web has displaced intelligent reporting. There was always a huge volume of mindless crap and copycat reporting, and then niche publications thick with intelligent reporting. The web has only made it easier to find the intelligent publications.

It's the mid-brow stuff that is getting squeezed. The low value information is free on the web, and the non-free high value in-depth analysis is much easier to find by way of the web (by slogging through much junk). So you see publications like Time and regional daily newspapers that do a little bit of information pushing and a little bit of half-assed analysis getting pushed out of business.

American journalism has failed.

You spent the last decade tittering over Bill Clinton's penis and how Al Gore "said he invented the Internet", puffing yourselves up about how brave you were to "embed" yourselves with the US military on its Excellent Shock & Awe Adventure!!!

Now you're all "Boo hoo! The geeks are eroding our god-given stranglehold over civic discourse. Save our dying business model!" Could you *be* any more pathetic? You sound like the fucking music industry.

When 600,000 journalists have lost their jobs, I'll be ready to start listening to your boozy sob stories.

Hahahahaha. Right. Google is bad because effective search with minimal advertising (yes, *minimal* -- and very easy to block with almost no knowledge, if that's how you roll) made the net usable.

You're a journalist. Stop and self-examine yourself. What is it a journalist does that a regular person with a blog doesn't do? Nothing. Blogging -- citizen journalists have already surpassed mainstream media (MSM) in content.

Let's see, thanks to your profession, we let this administration get away with calling anti-war activists 'un-American'. We had out-spoken politicians that raised serious, legitimate doubts about the war silence. We had the manipulated intelligence scandal AFTER finding there were no WMDs. Great timely reporting there, thanks MSM.

We had a CIA operative outed -- once again, thanks your government shilling. Speaking of PROFRESSIONAL journalism doing a better job than citizen journalists, where was the fact-checking on "They will greet us a liberators"?

Why is it the editors of the NYT stood alone in referring to GWB as "Mr. Bush" and not "President Bush"? Why will the editors of major publications run Op-Eds slamming the presidents, but won't go on the record for or against impeachment?

Your profession was kindly referred to as the "4th estate". You had a responsibility in keeping the citizen informed on the important events or not -- regardless of the citizen's apathy. Your profession pissed it all away for full-color sports pages and Dear Abby. Throw in a couple of press releases ("New gizmo reduces pollution in coal plants, so we at Coal International want you to know that coal isn't bad for the environment.") passed off as News and a bunch of crappy ads and you've got a modern newspaper.

There's nothing really modern about it. *Gasp*.

You're still trying to tell me how fabulous the emperor's new clothes are, over all the laughter coming from the citizen journalists at the blog party.

A journalist talking to an engineer about balls and soul is like a nun trying to give sex advice to a porn star. Seriously, what kind of drugs are you ON?

Here's an informative story you can run by your editor: The CEO of American Bridge, in 2004, while speaking at the University of Pittsburgh, stated "The liberal arts degree of the 21st century will be engineering and science." What he means to say is something soft on science/engineering will basically relegate to you an overpaid high school graduate. If you want to do anything meaningful, go to law school, enter politics, run a business, get a real job, you will need an engineering/science degree. Don't believe me? Ask the 400,000 Chinese engineers that graduate every year, as they steamroll past our soon-to-be declining economy.

Nice article. I find myself currently either on the receiving end of a reduction in social stature or recovering from a bout of narcissism, and quite honestly I find it difficult to discern between the two. A quick amble round the blogosphere and (shudder) MySpace shows that I'm not exactly alone and perhaps the only unique aspect of my situation is that I realise I'm in it.

Your comments on Google being the "American Idol" of human knowledge are spot on and have finally put words around something I have felt is wrong with Web2.0 for a while now - that the wisdom of the crowds, isn't ... and that the crowds frankly don't know their arses from their elbows. We all saw what American Idol did for music, right?

The question is how to make Web3.0 be about raising quality?

I was with you until you started bitching about how you'd gotten displaced by Web 2.0.

Suck it up Horse and Carriage maker. You're outmoded.

"Pornography of the self." That's good enough to steal (don't worry-- I will always give credit).

Your article reminds me of a thread on Metafilter (I think) about WoW, and someone had written how it had taken over his life, he lost girlfriends, jobs, etc. But the reason was exactly what you're talking about-- we don't get the affirmation in our jobs and families anymore (for many reasons) but WoW was immediate and powerful. People respected you, people "knew" you, people liked you. It's all a lie, of course; we barely know each other in person, let alone over the internet-- but it feels so good.

In 1992 I wrote an article about how internet porn would likely change the way teens developed, and change the sexual landscape (expectations too high, etc.) I thought that more people would be addicted because it gave such powerful and immediate gratification. I was way wrong. Porn barely ranks on the internet anymore. Teens don't rush home to check out naked cheerleaders. They run home to check out MySpace.

I'm not sure what's worse. (I'm kidding.) (Maybe I'm not.)

I really enjoyed that. Thank you.

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/994/593/1600/73352/178.jpg

Danno, your analogy doesn't fit because this isn't a simple case of something more feature rich replacing something less so - a car for a carriage being your example.

The economics that support investigative journalism - the kind that speaks truth to power - or shares the plight of those who are on societies edges - and bring them to a mass audience - have been obliterated.

And unless new ways are found to fund such efforts, our democracy, our society, will find itself in a dangerous place - if we haven't been brought there already.

That's why it's important to support efforts like http://www.newassignment.net/ and to keep in mind that all that glitters isn't gold. Or Google.

And to note that the situation that newspapers find themselves in only reached its tipping point because of social media. TV and Cable News (especially Cable News), had major impact that is forgotten about in talks like this.

"...original content creators—er, reporters—such as myself..."

So retelling something other people made/did makes you a content creator, but writing code that does the same thing does not? Sure, just like putting frozen fish sticks and french fries in the oven makes me a chef. Darn you, McDonald's, for taking away my raises!

[this is good], he said, without irony.

Hi, Philip. You start running Adwords, then I'll start running Adwords. Shit! What's the world coming to?

Supreme irony: The web is so efficient at delivering to me every newspaper in the world that I don't need to buy a single newspaper. Result: death of newspapers and unemployed journalists. Death of real journalism, the First Amendment and democracy.

But we've both been journalists long enough to know if the people running newspapers were as smart as the people running Google then the future of journalism would be in good hands. I won't bother going into the long litany regarding lack of vision and stupid business decisions made by the boneheads who run newspapers.

Anyway, I, too, am considering caving in and going with Adwords. My move to the San Diego area is rapidly chewing up my reserves. Just tell me you're doing it, too, and I can follow suit with a clear conscience.

Wow. Is this worth commenting on anymore? Has everything been said that needs to be said? Nevertheless, I'll offer my thoughts...

1. The Last Psychiatrist's post on Time's POTY was on point. Web 2.0 is extremely lame in many aspects, i.e. MySpace - the biggest of all - has the LAMEST interface. Ah, maybe we're just old fogeys who are semi-bitter against technological advancement.

2. I met my husband through a message board. Web 2.0 in some respects has its merits, but when actual human contact is replaced by constant communication with people you will never see or meet, this poses a problem. I did the chat room/IM thing as a teen so I attribute MySpace to being nothing more than a time waster for primarily teens. Teens have nothing better to do! The idle focus has shifted from the TV to Web 2.0.

3. I'm a journalist not currently in the field. (Ok, I do unpaid freelance work.) I have a wealth of opinion on the death of print journalism. Essentially, I can't work for a paper because they pay too little (even after 10 years of employment) and most dailies/weeklies (in my area) aren't even hiring. In Philly, the Inquirer nearly went on strike; the Inquirer's got talk of layoffs (more so for young journos); the Inquirer and Daily News are up for sale since Knight Ridder sold them and McClatchy doesn't want them; AND there's talk of getting rid of one of them (likely the DN). I'm guilty of contributing to this - nytimes.com is free and reading Metro (philly.metro.us) is a free paper. Metro's basically the "broadcast" journalism (if you can call it that) of print.

4. I originally wrote this comment by hand on my way home via train and typed it out. Amazing, isn't it? In the age of laptops, I use good ol' pen and paper.

Are you still reading? Good; glad to know you care.

Last point - mostly a plea - DO NOT SELL YOUR SOUL to Google ads. I originally thought there was no way to customize it but apparently my techie geek husband says there is. However, I pointed out that Adwords is mainly keyword-driven so I don't know how you'd get around pharmaceutical, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Eli Lilly, and AstraZeneca ads. You'd need to filter out medicine altogether. Or - you could have BOOBS!BOOBS!BOOBS! Those make money. I GUARANTEE.

But yeah, I'd cry for days if I saw an for Seroquel next to a post blasting AZ pushing Seroquel.

You don't want to make a poor girl cry, do you? ;)

P.S. I'd like to use HTML to do line breaks and I can't. Any suggestions?

A clear conscience, based on hoping the virtual jackpot does not land on a pharmaceutical ad, makes a lot of sense.(?)Oh, that must be satire, in the 2.0 world. Good thing print papers never use it for frontpages.

This is one time, a toss of the coin, or 'in it together mode' should have a solid platform, the one that we are trying to build to be heard louder as a group of people in the quest for a better life vs. what pharma tells/gives us. Allowing pharma ads to appear on a page where your integrity and beliefs are being spilled out daily to cover expenses is exactly what pharma hopes you do, and exactly what being a conformist would do. Credibility will be jeopardized, as the conflicted opinion vs.advertisement will prevail. There is only about 1% of the American public that take the chance of standing alone for what they believe.

The ones who make 100K or 200K quite possibly have never experienced pain, agony, human compassion, (avoiding saying, lack a soul).
As a para-educator, I know I could earn a better living as a pharma rep, or attorney. But at the end of the day, I do have a clear conscience, and did make an honest wage.

The entire newpaper vs. internet news makes me think about all of the people (including one of my relatives) that lost a job when radio dramas became a thing of the past when TV became the replacement. Some people (like my relative)just moved into that new frontier, found a job and made it work.

I find this a facisnating discussion, and even more, the discussion on other blogs re: this discussion. Hurry up and post to get high points. Taking it to the point of commenting on commenters. Priceless sociological nothing is real we are just atoms floating about story.

Thanks for the good read.

If I see an ad for Zyprexa here, I will kick your ass.

So... if I get you right you're worried about the depression that is to follow when the middle class serfs realize that they aren't really participants in a new world order, but still trapped servants of a more pervasively narcissistic and self aggrandizing ruling class intelligentsia? You mean... stop blogging you silly serf, go back to genuflecting before the New York Times and New Yorker Magazine where I can read the self satisfied musings of the wealthy, the ivied and the privileged as they talk endlessly about themselves, their homes, their trials, their apartments, their heroics, and their empathy for the common man? um... I guess I'll take my chances with depression.

Interesting point of view.
Many replies to comments, and one answer to the paper:

1. The crisis is indeed structural: people in pain are those lost, rather then incompetent; their is room and good money for reporters --- blog and AdSense is the only option so far, maybe Federated Media (FM) can become another soon, made by a journalist.

2. Yes, AdSense can be filtered easily, try to google "AdSense filter" and the first link will be an independent explanation.

3. However, the harder strikes are against the worst kinds of journos: an international comparison will make this clear to you; e. g. French speaking papers are in crisis in France and Belgium, but far less so in Switzerland, were quality was sensibly higher. One paper though it would be in danger, one that did nothing but choose and translate foreign press: automated translation engine, Internet bringing you the Zeitung and the Shibao at home. . . They are doing very well thank you. Proper translation engines will challenge them within a decade --- and by then, I hope they will all turn into "cultural translator" (what they increasingly do): explain the context. This will be priceless by then.

4. English-speaking press in general has better quality reporters, so I wouldn't worry too much about the "best" title. Local press might have to reinvent it-self, though --- and blog are great experimental platforms for that.

5. Don't blame people who try when you seen fumes and explosion out of the lab's chimney. Yes MySpace is ugly, that kind of ugly:
http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071406.html
The two last third of the video is an academic-grade lesson on what is quality in art.

6. Sorry, I can't believe your dialogue: either it's invented --- but the likelihood of meeting a Googler in Seattle is high, so I think you lacked of independence, honesty and objectivity in this rendering. For a journalist, three capital sins.

7. I love the way journalists consider themselves the incarnation of the First Amendment. If you are not read, you are not anymore. More importantly, you are not the only ones who depend on this principle (calling it "Free Speech" will avoid you having non-US-citizens feel discriminated against). A good example of that would be a population of people who write papers in journals, that speak of nothing but the truth and cherish their independence and freedom to speak as no journalist ever did: scholars. One difference with journalists? Anyone whom I replied to wrote me back so far; canned response from journos was the only options before blogging. Tough, I as biased: I'm a scholar myself. I grant you that their are read by few, and many make little effort to be understood --- but when they do, it can be a bombshell. And by the way: scholars were Google founders, and many more in the Internet engineering --- and those are generally the kind who really try to have complex issues made clear, to your benefit. Any step they take further from the academic values is a pain for me, and they have been some. I still think that they correct themselves faster, better then any press.

8. I love you reply, Christopher Wilson --- however I've seen a nun give great sex advice to a porn star: OK, the nun was an MD, trying to explain the importance of condoms in one the poorest areas in Africa, and the porn star was an illiterate 15 year-old. :] --- But we all got your point.

9. "Content-producers" might sound odd to you: How to call the BBC employees who made good documentary fiction like "What if Drugs Were Legal?"; part journalist, part film-maker, and the two having to work together?

And last: if I see any ad for Zyprexa in here, not only that would be wrong --- but useless: I don't care for a drug illegal in most of the world. The point of Google is not to show you or anyone ads that they don't care for. That is worth far more then 210,000 a year. Remember they generally take 20% and leave "content-producers" 80%. That's 840,000 to journalists in need: a nice sum, is it? This guy alone is -presumably- helping 20 journalists keep a job they love. What's the paycheck of a senior editor that heads such a team? He's not helping, he's not giving experienced advice, he's not covering your arses when you make a blunder like a good manager would --- indeed. But they was a time, not so long ago, when *half* of a journals staff was doing nothing but trying to convince advertisers to give away some cash. If you need a boss, make a syndicated blog.

Granted, the information economics has shifted, and any content can be reproduced. My call is that, as producing papers is not worth much these days (though you can make money out of being an original report producer: Google actively fights the splogs rawly copying you) answering to questions, doing what the mass-market economics make impossible, is not worth gold. If you can answer to comments here, make a synthesis that everyone will agree with ("Some think that. . .; others disagree: the core issue behind that is. . ."), start a conversation, you will have many people care about you.

"The Web 2.0 and the Net in general have been disasters for my profession, which is print journalism—"

True and False. Web 2.0 IS Journalism 2.0.

RSS Feeds, Daily Blogs, etc is the beat on the street ... Surviving on street. Its your Street Knowledge ...

Print journalism : Bloomberg Feed, NewsPaner, Magazine, Books, Encyclopedias ... which Print journalism are you referening to ...

Journalism 2.0 is attacking both ends of the spectrum in terms of knowledge transfer ... long term knowledge and short term ... and using human threads to do the processing ...

YouTube, MySpace, Google, and other evil entities may not have the answer you search ... haha 'search' ... but Wikipedia and other do no evil entites should ... i.e, depends on which end ofo spectrum you are attachking

Dear,

I understand you frustration.

In Belgium, Google has been forced by the Belgian law to remove content that was stolen from Newspapers websites who had been to court (Le Soir, La Libre Belgique).

The Web is just another channel that you need to control as a journalist. You have two options : make the best use of it (and protect your content as you want/need) OR don't use the web as a channel - but control other channels as well. Google can only index information that you made public.

Whatever the channel you use, it's the quality of your content that matters. Focus on providing quality content and controlling it. That's all that matters on the long term and it should pay off.

Google can't beat your brains, it's just a server farm that read text without being able to make an inference on it. Readers can't write conclusions on your texts: they only read. Only you can build the logic.

What I often see on really interesting articles (gartner reports for instance), Google can only index the abstracts which I find. If you want the real stuff, than you need to pay for it. I think it's a good model.

I am a blogger, and I consider myself a real journalist. I studied and did it in college and I've been doing this, man and boy, since a time when 80-decibel dot-matrix printers were cutting edge technology, and the latest things in print journalism were photo-optical typesetters.

I suppose I'm lucky that I never made the big time, because, well, I'd be in the same position you are.

But in fact I think the web is a boon for Real Reporters - along with all sorts of other Content Producers. I don't have to sell my soul to get past the desk of the person who's job it is to say "no," and I have no publisher or editor to appease.

I can say (and sell/advocate/shill for) anything or nothing. For some reason, Google considers me indigestible - perhaps my Graphictruths are too graphic. But I cover all costs plus money for a good quality bourbon by selling - t-shirts. More content - that happens to be mine, related to stuff I actually talk about, bought by people who think enough of the idea to wear it.

Far as I can remember, though, real reporters were considered dispensable long before the web arose, or even before bang-path addressing faded from memory.

The community newspaper I worked for - and the "professional" papers we strove to compete with for ad dollars - were composed mostly of press releases, wire copy and syndicated features. If there was an unsightly hole after ads, press releases and PSA fillers were used up, well, then we'd make shit up .

"I need a story for page two!"

"About What?"

"About 2 columns by three inches!"

...and I'd write it on the photo-setter, wax it's ass and paste it in.

Actually, I think it's easier now to do real reporting. The costs of research have plummeted, and the ability to walk away and do your own thing has multiplied. Greg Palast is a great example.

Not that I consider myself a Real Reporter. Feature writer, perhaps. Editoralist, certainly. And sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, I actually report news that I stumble across. The beauty of it is that I don't have to conform purely to any of those roles.

There is now a huge demand for good writers and writing because the web is still a verbal medium.

There's another thing about it that I love. It used to be that yesterday's triumph was today's fish-wrapper. Today, I can afford to write, I can afford to write what I wish, and I can afford to write with an eye toward the horizons as well as the damned "News Cycle." My site records regular traffic to pieces I've written a year or more ago.

It makes sense for me to invest time into a story, to polish it, and to write it to the standard it requires. Hell, I can even go back, revise and update it.

Best of all, I don't have to write down to the level of a half-literate sixth-grader OR up to the standards of the New Yorker. I don't have to sell my copy. It sells itself - and if it sucks, well, it usually doesn't.

I like that. And if all the bandwith and cheap to free storage I need is due to the desperate need of MySpacers and Flickerites to see Jessica Simpson's Boobs - well, that's nothing new at all.

My best guess is that least 80 percent of the development of Internet architecture, protocols, encryption, compression and traffic optimization was influenced by or is directly due to the fact that geeks like looking at boobs at least as much as Joe Sixpack - and are willing to commit significant thought to the question of seeing more boobs, faster and better.

But, you know, we geeks also like to read the articles.

The popularity of this very article, written to a depth that wouldn't get past any sane copy editor of any metro newspaper or even news magazine should prove that.

The media malpractises that come to mind for me are the "memo" from a typewriter that's exactly like MS Word, photoshopping images in Lebanon to increase the smoke, photos and toys that survive when none of the furniture has, etc.

It can't be merely bias. If it were, the forgeries would be harder to detect. It is more like indifference.

The media has been declining even before the WWW. So don't blame us.

Who should we trust for information? Print journalism? Fox news (the most popular news channel in the country, even when everybody knows it's a mockery of actual reporting)? All mass media is in the business of making money -- fact, however unfortunate. In the real world, there's nobody that we, the unwashed masses, can trust to deliver honest-to-god informed, impartial news. How many times did your editors make you change things? Which multinational company with political interests owned the publications/s you worked for?

Regurgitated news echoing around the internet works okay. If something important or interesting to my peer group happens, they'll mention it -- and link to a few blogs with informed discussion much more in-depth than can be found in any print or video publication. What's more, they don't pretend to be nonpartisan and the dissenting opinions are right there at the bottom of the page, enabling the reader to easily sort out the different positions on an issue.

Of course, myspace is terrible; It's a massive, steaming pile of boring cr*p that nobody cares about. I avoided being sucked into it by virtue of being pathologically antisocial (and good thing, too!), but as a child of the information revolution - a phrase that through dint of long practice I can very nearly use with a straight face - I realize that everyone has the right to use the internet for whatever they want. If almost everybody wants to use it for auto-fellation on a massive scale, no amount of reactionary whining will bring back the good old days. The best we can do is sit back, chuckle at TLP's clever graphics, and hope they grow out of it eventually.