Opinion
You don’t deserve Time magazine’s Person of the Year designation
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Also by Jason Smathers:
- Want to rethink the way we study journalism? Add some research (January 29, 2010)
- Meeting the new decade with own set of changes (January 17, 2010)
- ASM: The gauntlet has been thrown (January 17, 2010)
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A hazy Mylar mirror was Time magazine’s way of announcing that “you” were the Person of the Year. That cheap gimmick should be a prophetic warning to the Internet revolutionaries: The revolution isn’t quite here, so don’t celebrate just yet. Time had more than enough choices for Person of the Year, an honor the magazine gives to the most important newsmaker of the year. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran, Hu Jintao and the Democratic power shift were all considered for the honor. They were pushed aside for the phenomenon of user-generated content. When a fuzzy reflection greeted readers, many couldn’t see themselves — at least not clearly. The reader response was just as fractured. Some of the letters sent to Time joined in on the self-congratulatory mood, others criticized Time for missing the point. Yet, the comment that seemed to reverberate throughout the “blogosphere” was, “What a cop-out.” It’s not that user-generated content wasn’t important in 2006. The rise of YouTube, along with continuing success of Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace and blogs throughout the Internet heralded in a new voice in the media. Now, mainstream news utilizes this innovative wave of technology in daily newscasts. The major networks often cover the latest Internet video, and CNN regularly highlights the latest news from the political blogs. The problem is that “you” aren’t entirely responsible for that. As big as user-generated content has become, it’s more the result of technology and the mainstream media than the average Internet user. The blog is the best example of the hurdles that user-generated content needs to jump. As one of the oldest forms of the new “digital democracy” Time celebrates, it has had the most time to mature. It hasn’t taken advantage of it. Take, for example, two sites: Daily Kos, a popular liberal blog, and Michelle Malkin’s blog, a popular conservative site. While both sites present their opinions with the backing of eloquent arguments, video links and audio files, they are still just debating each other on biased points, as are most bloggers. They’ve been working toward the wrong goals. The problem with the “digital democracy” is that it applies innovation to technology rather than to content and organization. The bloggers have been given the opportunity to create content that the mainstream media won’t cover. However, rather than investigate these stories on their own through a network of dedicated truth seekers, they rely on mainstream media clips and radio show chat to bicker about why they’re right. We may have more access than ever to information, but it’s still coming from the same place. The same is true for Wikipedia. While the technology allows anyone to easily update a page on anything from Charlemagne to “The Simpsons,” more controversial pages are often closed off to the average user, after a few people riddle the page with rumors and lies. Stephen Colbert’s quest to prove the flexible nature of “wikiality” resulted in the page on elephants being locked to unregistered users. Most of the contested “facts” are still under debate. Yet, user-generated content’s biggest flaw is that it still relies on the old guard. The Internet Democracy isn’t here yet, because it is still relying on the mainstream media for most of the content. Blogs still get the majority of their news from Reuters or BBC. Video clips on YouTube often feature clips from TV shows, movies or a modification of pre-existing content. The No. 1 viral video clip of 2006 wasn’t anything groundbreaking: It was a clip of Britney Spears’ television show, “Chaotic,” from the now-defunct television network UPN. In many ways, the mainstream media is still dictating what is popular and what gets viewed. If user-generated content is going to change the face of the media, “you” needs to be defined. Time’s biggest blunder in naming “you” Person of the Year is that there is no “you” on the Internet. It is not a collective. Blogs are more a constant debate than a journalistic tool. “Digital Democracy” will only come when a group of dedicated users finally springs out of the mass of voices and organizes its own news service. Twenty-four-hour news exists, but it only covers a sampling of stories due to corporate ties and its own prioritizing. The tools for reporting are finally at the footsteps of the masses, but they have to put down their sticks first. If users want to debate, they should go use an online forum. That’s what they’re for. Bloggers need to stop debating the news that they are given and start searching on their own. There are enough people dedicated to blogging to contest the truth, we need to start searching for it ourselves. We have the Freedom of Information Act; we can ask the important questions and we finally have the clout (thanks to our recent award of “Person of the Year”) to find the truth. Now, we have to take a chance, for once. Jason Smathers (jsmathers@badgerherald.com) is a junior majoring in history and journalism.
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I read your column, Jason, and you are right. We need to go beyond just reading blogs and search for the truth ourselves. Otherwise we succumb to the bloggers, whose only intent is self-adulation. We are young, we are educated and we are Internet-connected. Long live Google and democracy!
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yay smathers! intelligent and true!
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I contend that the person of the should have been Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth, known by former Senator George Allen as “Macaca.” The slur heard around the world.