Essays: February 2007 Archives

It's easy to dismiss the camera phone if you focus on the visual quality of the image. This is very often the argument against their use in the newsroom, as you know if you've been reading the posts on this page (and you should be). But quality is a nebulous term. The footage to the left is not what I would call good "quality", but what it captures is priceless to me.

You see, I have pursued the "paper car" seen in the video for months and, until today, it eluded my photographic grasp. The car would be there, but I didn't have a camera phone. A friend would see the car, but again, no camera. Once, it was spotted in the computer center lot and and a call came to the newsroom to run out with a camera. By the time we got there, it was too late. "Moby blue" scooted away, just out of my grasp.

What made the difference today? My new Motorola SLVR. No, this isn't an ad for the SLVR. In fact, looking at the image quality it provides might make you run into the open arms of Nokia's N-series phones (full disclosure: we are working with Nokia on uses for the N-series, in case you missed that). Nevertheless, because my new phone has a VGA (ugh!) camera in it, I can now share the glory that is the "paper car" with the rest of the world. That is what I call a "quality" catch!

Who drives this vehicle? Why do they keep so much paper in it? Is it, in fact, hard to drive over speed bumps due to the low-riderish, compressed suspension?

These are all questions that a citizen journalist could answer by staking out the car and talking with the owner. Let's face it, a reporter isn't going to cover this story. Me? I had to get back to the newsroom to show off my catch to all of you. This must be that pesky lack of time so many have written about interfering with the citizen journalist.

So let me ask you, the viewer, is it worth-while to see this absurd vehicle in the diminished visual quality I have provided or would you prefer that I just verbally describe such a sight to you? Let me know in the comments.

After my news shift this Friday I met with Patrick who set me up with a sweet $500 Nokia N73 to film my citizen journalism assignment. I asked for little instruction with the device and encountered my first bit of trouble when I couldn't even figure out how to turn it on. (A quick phone call remedied that situation.) After I finally got the thing turned on, I experimented with it by filming my dog, fish, and roommates. Having a firm grasp on the capabilities of this gadget I proceeded to carry it with me the entire weekend waiting for inspiration to strike.

Inspiration didn't strike until Sunday when I realized I needed to record SOMETHING in order to get the project done. Then I remembered something in Lawrence that really irked me. Traffic signals. More specifically the traffic signals at the intersections of 9th and Vermont St. and 8th and Vermont St. The two are never synchronized, and the first driver in line can never make the green light at 8th St. when heading north and going the 20mph speed limit.

I had the idea to highlight this problem for my first vlog, but quickly realized the large GL camera were not designed to be operated while driving. But the Nokia N73 on the other hand...

The camera phone worked out exactly how I had hoped. It was easy for me to operate while driving, and was portable enough for me to do everything "on the spot" without the need of a tripod or microphone. You can judge the quality of the film yourself.

The only problem I have with the phone was the difficulty of downloading the media. The video files are saved at a tiny aspect ratio, and when I imported them into FInal Cut I couldn't increase the size. I ended up having to use iMovie, a program I had touched before.

It is possible that these phones will have a place in the future of journalism. I think I have proved they can be used by real people to bring light to a problem, no matter how small, that effects citizens. The only downside is the compatibility of the phone with current technology, something I'm sure will give newsroom directors many headaches.

In order to complete this experiment of ‘citizen journalism,' I tried to imagine how a citizen would go about getting a story. I only gave myself a few hours to complete the experiment because, after all, news is timely and most ordinary people wouldn't have a lot of time to complete a story. My results were just about what I expected; the only worthwhile ‘citizen journalism' comes at unexpected times.

When we think of ‘citizen journalists' we think of the shocking video out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, or the cell phone video from Saddam Hussein's execution. We do not think of someone shooting video of pot holes on local streets (See above video!). The brilliance of ‘citizen journalism' is that it catches the unexpected. The downfall of it is that it isn't sufficient for reliable coverage.

Television stations can not be everywhere at a moments notice, which is what makes ‘citizen journalism' so valuable in some situations. One thing I have learned in the news business is to "expect the unexpected." The problem is that we can not always be at the unexpected by simply snapping our fingers. "Citizen journalists' can be anywhere at a given moment, like at a local fire last year, which provides us with astonishing pictures that would otherwise never be seen.

Although ‘citizen journalists' can sometimes bring us the most compelling footage, it is always associated with a compelling or historic story. When it comes to telling the story of sub-par streets in Lawrence, people will not accept the above footage on the news. ‘Citizen Journalism' is only as good as the phenomenon that it covers.

There's a classic scene in Swingers: Mikey (Jon Favreau), after careful drunken consideration, calls up a girl he just met at the bar that night. He leaves a perfectly acceptable message on her answering machine with one problem – he wasn't able to give the last number of his phone number before getting cut off. He calls back to give the last digit, then falls into the same trap again. Over the next few minutes, he hilariously and painfully descends into a downward spiral of incoherent babble, frustrated by the limitations of the technology at hand.

Eleven years later and the basic storyline remains the same. I have a RAZR phone, which had generally satisfied my expectations. Then I tried using it to play "citizen journalist" this week, and it was an absolute train wreck.

The quality of the video is strikingly poor with limited zoom capabilities. The worst part is that it only shoots in fifteen second increments. You want to interview someone? Good luck trying to fit a complete question and answer in fifteen seconds. And then you are prompted to "save" or "delete" the clip before you can record another one, which disrupts any natural flow to the interview.

"Gee thanks for those eight gorgeous seconds of insight, sir…hang on just a sec while I save this file to the video gallery, select a file name, get back to the main menu and then choose to create a new ‘flix"--

The Swingers scenario is 11 years old now, and nifty advances like Caller ID have sort of solved the problem. In a few more years, it's a pretty safe bet that prices will go down and technology will improve for video phones, and citizen journalists around the globe will begin to reap the benefits. Until then--for the vast majority of people who don't feel like dropping half a dozen C Notes on a mobile phone—we'll just have to settle for abysmal production value, fifteen grainy seconds at a time.

Driving is expensive. Gas costs lots and tune-ups are rip-offs. Parking downtown is often impossible and sitting in traffic sucks. This is besides the obvious environmental problems driving exacerbates, or our country's little oil addiction, which (arguably) is a healthy kick to our "keep the Middle East in turmoil so we can take advantage of its resources" reflex. The only real reason to drive anywhere in Lawrence (at least in the areas students frequent -- campus, downtown, student ghetto, East Lawrence) is that it will get you there faster than walking or riding a bike. Or is it faster? Nate Martin reports.

I threw out my journalistic instincts and know-how and became a citizen journalist for a day. I lugged around a camera phone and tried to find and capture a newsworthy event. But, I found, those knuckleheads, who occasionally make the five o'clock news for being at the right place at the right time with their camera phones, are simply lucky — not reporters.

The Assignment: Be a citizen journalist. Carry around a camera phone, go about your daily business and see what you find.

The Outcome: Outdated, "Blair Witch Project"- like video of the wreckage at Kennedy's Bar and Grill (Waldo, KCMO) and an unprofessional interview from a police officer. The cop said the fire roared for 10 hours on February 16. Asbestos was found at Kennedy's, which will prolong reconstruction, and 75th Street Brewery will take three to four weeks to rebuild, due to all the smoke damage.

My Feelings: Many things struck me about my experience as a citizen journalist. First, the officer I spoke with was helpful and willing to answer my questions. He wasn't hesitant or intimidated. If I showed up with a tripod and a big camera, he may have been less inclined to speak with me. Citizen journalists may appear less harmful to officials and experts than reporters and journalists; therefore, it could be easier to find story ideas.

While at Kennedy's, I found myself asking the officer questions while video taping the wreckage. Though the camera wasn't focused on him, I was hoping he would reveal something new and newsworthy about the fire and I would catch it on tape. I have taken an ethics in journalism class — citizen journalists have not. They may use unethical tactics to get interviews and stories.

Back at my car after taping, it struck me how unprepared I felt to create a story. I had video but no written notes. I made a visual story but not a factual one. I couldn't remember anything the police officer said. Citizen journalists can provide news stations with video but not actual stories. Professional journalists still have to go out and research, interview and develop a story worth broadcasting.

It was also difficult coming up with a story and getting my video on the computer. In conclusion, I found tales told from a camera phone are tall and incomplete.

KFTY-TV in Santa Rosa, California, is hurting. The station is currently owned by media behemoth, Clear Channel, and serves the Sonoma County area, covering San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose in addition to Santa Rosa. Rather than continuing to dwindle in obscurity, the station has opted for a decidedly avant-garde move: ask people in the community to provide programming.

As always, the devil is in the details. In this instance, the details have not yet been released. So many questions remain: Will citizen journalists be paid for content? What kind of accountability will these citizen journalists have? What about quality equipment – will the nightly news now become an endless stream of grainy cell phone video clips? Any one of these issues, handled clumsily, has the potential to derail this novel little experiment.

KFTY General Manager and Vice President, John Burgess was less than inspiring in making the announcement, characterizing the bold move as merely "a business decision we had to make." Ho-hum. Where's the revolutionary zeal, Johnny boy?

This isn't exactly the type of move that you can "kind of" do. There has to be a firm commitment and extensive outreach or the quality (and viewer retention) won't be there. In perusing the KFTY website for more than five minutes, there was no discernable link for potential citizen journalists to learn more information about contributing to the station. Are you kiddin' me?

I'm going to go out on a limb here.

KFTY, as it is currently constituted, has no intention to implement the move. The announcement was just a good ol'-fashioned trial balloon to pique public curiosity. In this case, the station itself is in limbo with respect to ownership because Clear Channel has announced that it is "going private" and will soon sell all its TV stations.

The demographics of Santa Rosa are relatively conducive to the cultivation of citizen journalism, and it is a bold initiative. But instead of hype, there has been relative silence. My guess is that KFTY is merely positioning itself for a more favorable buy-out. Instead of bidding on some no-name laggard in the Bay Area, the same discerning investor now has the ability to bid on an innovative station with a streamlined staff and a virtually unlimited upside. That's actually a pretty shrewd way to artificially inflate the value of a failed station.

I'll admit to watching the local public access channel at my home in Overland Park. I watch it for the half a second it takes to switch to the next channel (likely ESPN for me), because good ol' channel 2 is what my TV tunes to when I switch off from my Nintendo Wii.

Otherwise, I'd never even know there WAS a public access channel.

KFTY-TV in Santa Rosa, Calif., fired most of its news-gathering staff earlier this month and claimed to be moving to viewer-produced news. That, and some nice community news and event dates. Sounds oddly like . . . uh, public access TV?

I worried greatly about viewers in Santa Rosa--maybe they don't have public access TV! (Holy crap!) Looking to save the viewing audience from such a lack, I looked into the cable TV offerings (enter 95401 as the zip code) in Santa Rosa and found, thankfully, Comcast customers can tune to channel 69 for all public access TV needs. (KFTY is on Comcast channel 10 in case you missed the the same boring stuff on channel 69.)

Gathering news is hard. It takes time, intense attention to detail, and a keen bullshit detector. Oh, and it takes some money, too. But asking if Citizen Joe will replace Journalist Joe as the producer and arbiter of news content is exactly the wrong question. If Citizen Joe wants to do his own journalism, he can try this nifty gizmo: swarmcasting software, which turns anyone's PC into an Internet TV station.

KFTY is clearly making a final gasp before drowning for good. Even its executives admit the station hardly registers with Nielsen ratings. Clear Channel made a mistake when it purchased KFTY, and making the station "viewer-driven" merely draws out the death throes of this tiny TV station.

Fire, insult and gag professional news people; a perfect example of how not to start a new journalism venture. But that's just what KFTY-TV50 in Santa Rosa, Calif., decided to do. Management told staffers, while they worked on the evening newscast, that the news would not air and that they were all fired.

The station went on to announce that they would replace the news with content from the community: citizen journalism (This link is specifically aimed at KFTY-TV50 management - educate yourself).

This led to a widespread condemnation from speculation among the blogging community that the station is a cheapskate looking to make easy cash off others' work.

Plus, the station pissed off at least some of its viewers. Yeah, the ones who are now supposed to give them content so they can make money. Wow! A trifecta of poor taste, bad management and lousy PR!

Let's take a look at some quotes:

News staff who were laid off were prohibited from discussing the station's decision as part of their severance agreement. - The Healdsburg Tribune

Translation: Media-created censorship of professional journalists about a major news story. Nice.

Frankly, I think we're going to do a much better job of covering local issues than we are doing right now. - John Burgess, KFTY-TV50's general manager

Translation: Some kid with a cell phone makes a better reporter than you.

I don't know that Burgess could have handled this any worse than he did. If he treats pros this way, how will he treat the amateurs he's banking on? Even if it wanted to submit content, how can the community possible trust him with its work?

I think building a community based news outlet can succeed, but first it takes an understanding of what makes communities work. Trust builds good relationships. Betraying the trust of the community only sets a news outlet up for future failure.

My father is an alcoholic sexist, and my mother has a criminal record.

No, this is not true. I made it up. Who is going to fact check my blog besides me, though?

When media starts to rely on citizen journalism, like KFTY-TV in Santa Rosa, Cal., who will be the fact checkers? Who will be responsible for false information?

Even if someone finally catches the false info, the damage could already be done.

I am not talking about damage to a blogger's credibility. I am talking about someone else's image. I am talking about blog libel.

If I do not like one of my co-workers, John Doe, what will stop me from posting stories on how he steals money from his volunteer jobs?

That sounds like news. It will get people's attention in the community. I bet I can even make up enough "facts" for a convincing story. People will always wonder about Mr. Doe like an accused rapist.

Then, what if John Doe applies for another job. His name is googled, and look what pops up.

Consequences for me: I can never be credible in the blogging word again.

Well, big deal. I was not going for credibility. I got what I wanted. I damaged Mr. Doe's name. Unfortunately, there is currently no laws threatening me or protecting people like John Doe.

Discussions on on-line libel tend to center about businesses, companies and agencies. None of which applies to an individual, citizen reporters.

Plus, there is nothing to stop a citizen journalist from creating another alias to "report" under. Anyone can blog from any Web accessible computer too.

I do not want my news from random citizens, whom I cannot trust provide the truth about their stories or even their own names.

Free-for-all, citizen journalism, like KFTY-TV, is not just annoying, it can be dangerous.

Argentina. Israel. Peru. Ireland. Australia. If you were to throw a dart onto a map and it landed on a country, my best friend Rachael will visit it... that is, if she hasn't already been there.

Traveling and discovering new places and people is something that she has always been fascinated with. I, on the other hand, have been living vicariously through her globe-trekking adventures since Junior year in high school, when she lived in France for 9 months. This is a plea to have her start blogging and vlogging.

Rachie,
You know I love you... but when you go abroad, I hate you. I hate that I can't call you. I hate that you're hundreds of miles away. I hate that we can't go shopping or out for coffee. I also hate that my mailbox gets full every time you send an e-mail and you want to tell the rest of us in the states about your fantastic time abroad.

Honestly, those e-mails are so LONG. Not to mention, you cram in so much information, we don't really know what you're even doing. It's impossible to really know how liberating it was to live with an indigenous tribe in the Andes Mountains through a mere few sentences.

We did talk when you were in Argentina last semester. But those video chats were few and far between, because we could only do chat when we were online at the same time. That's the problem. You go too far away, our time zones don't sync up.

This is where a blog and vlog would be useful. Just as I posted a vlog about what my day was like, you could post a vlog about what your family ate for dinner in Tel Aviv. Imagine how cool it would be for the rest of us to be able to watch the Bolivian protesters march past your bedroom window in Buenos Aires instead of looking at a few pictures?

It would not only act as an active diary for you to remember your trip, but it would be an interactive way for the rest of us to be in contact with you. No more long e-mails and we can get updates on your adventures as often as you're on the internet.

I've done my research on this Rachie. People are posting travel blogs from all over the world. There are people out there just like you. You could research a place through someone else's vlog, visit it, and post something about your experience. How cool would that be?

I promise it's much easier than you think. In fact, I bet you'll become addicted, wanting to post everything you do and see. The fun thing will be when the rest of us at home start to post comments and keep up with you without directly e-mailing us.

It will be easy to do. It will be fantastic. It will be like we are there with you.

Consider it. Because unlike the time I told you boys had cooties, this time I actually know what I'm talking about. Your travel vlog will be a huge hit.

Ciao, adios, shalom, kwaheri, bye!!!
T

For every 100 parking spaces slated to students, the University of Kansas sells about 156 parking permits. That means each student gets about 3/5 of a spot. Sounds like something I heard in history—seems like it was something about unfairness.

This wouldn't piss me off as much if only the nearby faculty/staff lots were chock full, too. But they're not.

At most, faculty/staff lots are oversold at a 29 percent rate—almost half the oversell rate students are forced to endure. (Stats are from KU Parking and studies posted on its site.)

Uh, hey Chancellor Hemenway—we pour thousands into KU's coffers each year (and tell Lew we've got season tickets for basketball). Think maybe you can at least get us some better parking if you're not gonna let us students into games we've got tickets for?

I am not a fan of cute little kids or fuzzy pet visuals. But, I am a journalist.

Kids and animals are easy outs for photographers or videographers. At least I have been told that by several photojournalists.

Remember Nick Ut's Pulitzer prize winning photo of a napalm attack aftermath in Vietnam? You might not remember the photographer. You have probably seen the photo, though, even if you were not born at the time Ut snapped it.

Dramatic, tragic photos win prizes. The great ones sick around to mark major events of a decade, like the assassination photo of Robert Kennedy. After all, it goes with the old saying: "If it bleeds; it leads." Visual media of this kind must be what people always want to see.

Unfortunately, it seems the professionals do not always know everything. While news editors are more likely to pick photos, like Nick Ut's photo, non-journalist are not. When asked to chose the better of two photos non-journalists went with the cute kid and his fuzzy pet dog over Nick Ut's photo. It's the "awww" affect.

The internet has made choosing what news and information you want to view easier. Anyone can be an editor. The problem is, people might not break out of their comfort zone. Cute kids and their pets are great, but imagine if you could narrow even that down to cute kids and pets of your family and friends. After all who wants to see photos of people and animals they do not know. Sadly though, narrowing the information you take in, can narrow your mind.

If cute kids and pet are all people look at, these "awww" photos will lose their attractiveness. "Awww" photos are a break from the hard news. Neither visual type should replace the other entirely.

After all, no one, but my roommates, cares to hear or see their cute pet hamsters all the time. Even their friends and family are humoring them.

Believe it or not, their hampsters are not any different than your cute kid or fuzzy pet.

Sometimes you do something that you think is exceedingly clever and, when you're done, you realize you could be just mean spirited.

In my computer business, I get e-mails like the one in this video every week; e-mails barely coherent with only a vague idea as to what might be wrong. They always make me think of a spoken word bit by Henry Rollins. His point was that the fan from the Czech Republic, while struggling in English, managed to make it work. Oh, how I wish the same was true for my correspondents.

When I first started my business, I would spend hours trying to help people like this. They didn't buy their machine from me, but had somehow found me and I felt obligated to try and assist them. What I eventually learned is that, no matter how much time I spent with them, it never translated into a sale.

Some decide fixing their machine is too much work or money. Many of them just want is free tech support under the guise of being a potential customer. Looking at the Geek Squad's price list, I'm not sure I blame them. Actually, I have suggested to these e-mailers that they seek out the Geeks. I guess I get a bit of schadenfreude from imagining the ensuing conversation if they follow through.

"Second place is the first loser," my friend Melissa informed me. "And no one remembers third."

Firsts are important. Most girls remember their first kiss. Mine was in my small, hometown's movie theater on a Friday night. His name was Brett.

Other names come to mind when I think of "firsts". George Washington was the first president of the United States. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president who fruitfully controlled the power of radio with his fireside chats. Then, there was gorgeous John F. Kennedy, the first president who successfully tapped into the power of television.

The next major technological power presidents and presidential candidates must learn to master: the Internet. Creating Internet video blogs, known as vlogging, can bring candidates face-to-face with voters on a large, more personal and closer scale than ever before.

Recently, Democratic presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama made news with their vlogs. Clinton even used it to announce her plans to run for president in 2008. They are not the first politicians to vlog, though. Senator John Edwards is just one other example of a politician who has tried to master the art of vlogging. It is obvious vlogging is already part of political elections and voter outreach.

Do you think Roosevelt was the first president to try and use the radio for political gain? And what about Regan? Was he the first to jump on the television idea? No.

Thus, the real question is not whether vlogging will impact the 2008 presidential election.

It is, who will be remembered as the first president who cracked the code to vlogging.

Buried deep on an unnamed friend's computer you could find evidence. Not the kind that could put me in jail, but evidence none-the-less. In 15-second video clips, I am a fool, a bastard, a drunkard and other words I'll choose not to use here.

They are the party vids from my heyday. And hey, did we party. Think Roman debauchery at it's finest. It's not my lifestyle now, but those videos have immortalized what I was. No presidential nominations for me.

Now, imagine if GW's college friends had owned video cell-phones. Think he would have won the presidency? A little more recent: Monica. We could have watched vid of the stain that shook the world. What would Hilary's chances be if we had all watched her hubba Bubba go oral in the Oval? Boom-chicka-wah-wah!

Beware politicians, Little Brother is the new demon behind the camera lens. He's your best friend in college. She's that one night stand in Albuquerque. LB is tagging along with your campaign, but he was also there when you were a dumb kid. Little Brother doesn't want to expose you to the government; LB just wants to expose you. And it's not just you; it's your wife or husband, your kids, your staff and your friends. Their past can kill your future.

Video's greatest selling point has been shock. Some can hope that online videos are democratizing the process, but rational discourse doesn't capture the public's imagination like chaos. Racial slips-o-the-tongue, the Dean scream and "hot" blood are tame compared to what will come. Prepare for full frontal nudity, violence and the absurd. The gotcha, past and present, will be the online video star and what makes the vlogs of the 2008 election.

Or maybe America is more forgiving than I think.

Dear Wannabe President:

If you're reading this, then that means you at least know what a blog is. This is a good start. I am a new voter, and I don't know who to vote for. I, like many of my uninformed peers, am on the internet for hours at a time. Do I need to spell this out for you?

Good luck with that election thing,

-Politically Ignorant College Kid

I'm not much in to politics. I've only been alive long enough to vote in one presidential election. Yeah, I "rocked the vote," but I haven't paid attention to any other elections since then. I'm not even sure what "primary" is. We vote on who we're going to vote on? Whatever. I'm new to this.

I never paid the attention I should have during government classes, and I know there are thousands of others like me out there who didn't either. There are a ton of new voters who are just too uninformed to care about voting, but I do think that blogs and vlogs will help change this during the next election.

Of course candidates will use vlogs to campaign. They'd be stupid not too. YouTube reaches millions, and it's FREE. With vlogs, idiots like me who don't have a clue about the candidates can be informed by not only the candidates themselves, but also people my age that might care about the same issues as me. Stuff that the major news networks might not even talk about all that much.

Blogs were supposed to change the way campaigns were done during the last election. This time around, vlogs will be responsible for a few of those swing votes (Did I just use the term 'swing votes'? I'm getting better already).

Ana Marie Cox saved me and damned me (probably eternally) to hell.

Blogs like Cox's "Wonkette" have impacted my politics—in fact, despite the fact that Cox has since retired from the Wonkette site, I rarely bother with straight political news stories any more (except for my beloved Wall Street Journal).

It's way more fun to read snappy, snarky analysis and interpretation like this wicked item: "Are abstinence pledges just an evangelically correct way of saying [anal sex]? 'Yes,' says a group of Ivy League crotch scholars." (Read the whole thing. Beware Cox's use of cruder words.)

Yowch. Why read the politics and policy in the newspaper when Wonkette will distill it all into silly sex jokes for me? Yeah, baby—I'm addicted! My interest in political ideas and people has been saved.

Now just imagine if a telegenic video bloggerette delivered those same acerbic lines in a 2-minute vlog. The walls of the newsroom would shake with my laughter. There's no way I'd forget such a thing. But video blogs right now are nothing like the nuclear wit of Ana Marie Cox. Some have great production value, but most are still at the snore-inducing level of presidential candidate Barack Obama's new vlog.

Cox, my blogging idol, has gone on to Time.com—and I'm stuck in the hell of public-access-type political video blogs. Ana Marie, if you don't come back to blogging, I'll still be singing the Ave Maria for the way you restored my interest in political news.

I've got 30 minutes before my next class starts. Actually, my break was 45 minutes, but I spent fifteen of it watching a flying lawnmower, a guy backflipping on to his face, and that cowbell skit from Saturday Night Live. I've decided to pull myself away from YouTube long enough to type this up.

You know what YouTube's best quality is? It not only allows anyone to share a video of anything to someone across the world, but it also lets us tell everyone what we think about it. Sure, most of this stuff is stupid, but every now and then something gets posted that's actually newsworthy, and may not have gotten the attention it deserved otherwise. It's called the YouTube effect, and it's changing the way people share information (sometimes really dumb information, but information nonetheless).

I don't necessarily think YouTube is killing TV news for its generation. It's simply entertaining us more than anything. YouTube is citizen journalism at its best. I'm not going to trust the majority of the yahoos who post on YouTube. I'll let the pros supply me with news I can trust.

And I'm not sure YouTube is even affecting television news. Why do I think this? Because I am part of the next generation of viewers, and I've never actually used YouTube for anything productive. I honestly don't know anyone who has. I've also never come across something so gripping that the whole world absolutely needed to know about it. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got like 10 minutes left, so I'm going to go back to watching kids kicking each other in the crotch.