I remember walking to class one September morning my freshman year. It was very early, I had class at 9:30, and not many people were on campus yet. I got to class and sat in front of the door when another girl from my class sat down. She turned to me and said, with fear in her voice, "Do you know why a plane hit the Pentagon?"
The Pentagon? Are you serious? My uncle works at the Pentagon.
After class I ran to the computer lab and went to the CNN.com website, looking for a place where I could find out if my uncle was okay or not. (After a phone call to my mom, it turned out that he was.)
But I had turned first to the Web. I knew that I couldn't find out if he were dead on TV or in the newspaper. I think on that day, 9/11, the Internet proved itself as a legitimate way to present news.
The Internet gave us up-to-the-minute information and didn't make us wait until that night's TV broadcast to find out new information. It didn't make us wait until tomorrow for the whole story in the newspaper, when all we really wanted to know was whether our loved ones were alive. And the Internet supplied us with an almost unending supply of related news on and after 9/11.
But I also think that the Internet changed the definition of news and what is newsworthy. Many Americans, including myself, rushed to their computers to find lists of the victims, praying that no one they knew was on that list. The Internet personalized news for us.
We see this all the time. Internet news sites send e-mails to subscribers, but the content is based on user preferences; everything from their baseball team's scores from last night to updates on their personal stock portfolio. The news is their own personal news entree, served up just the way they ordered it.
Sure, the Web has impacted news in other ways other than personalization, but personalizing the content will just keep people coming back for more. It's just what they want and not more than they need.
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