Essay About News Articles And Election Coverage

Internet and Democracy
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IF THE UNSUBSTANTIAL sound bite is the shame of televised
election coverage, then information overload is the parallel pitfall on
the Internet.
After spending one interminable day in October reviewing Web
coverage of the presidential campaign, I can verify that the online
universe is indeed infinite, and that politics, not pornography,
seemed the most prolific theme.
Stunned by thousands of news articles, background pieces,
surveys, discussion forums, transcripts and commentary, this
human brain nearly screamed for spoon-fed mush. Election sections
on most of the major news sites were so enormous that a person
couldnt possibly process all the sections and subsections and
sub-subsections. About 20 percent of the stuff seemed digestible; the
rest was far more than the average visitor would care to chew.
But thats the nature of the Internet, isnt it? Throw enough stuff
at the wall, and most of it will be used by someone. Let folks pick and
choose their news. If nothing else, all the fodder provided a number of
ready-made high school civics reports and fed the repurposing
requirements of fellow reporters.
And why not? Airtime and column inches dont exist on the
Internet. Theres no need to decide between an interview with a
candidates grade school sweetheart, a 5,000-word analysis of his
position on health care or a comparison of campaign platforms. You
can do all of that and more.
This is a good thing, isnt it? Yes. As long as an organization has the
resources and vision to distinguish its core coverage from the
ornaments that surround it.
Along those lines, cheers to all of the major news sites for their
efforts at live speech and debate coverage, solid election news and
voting resources.
Nearly every news organization with access to live video streamed
it quite successfully during the debates and provided cataloged
archives for future reference (abcNEWS.com even offered a stream
in Spanish). Nearly live text transcripts were also available on most
sites.
The innovation award goes to Web White & Blue 2000
(www.webwhiteblue.org). Sponsored by the Markle Foundation, the
project was a consortium of 17 major Internet sites and news
organizations from AOL and Yahoo to MTV and MSNBC. Each day the
presidential candidates or their surrogates would respond to a
question submitted by a visitor at one of the partner sites. The
answers and rebuttals could come in any format and were unlimited