breaking fast news Worlds and Business

Isn't About.Com going under or something? Didn't I read that recently that they are having financial problems.

Yes, we can all find nice-and-neatly packaged encyclopedic information at hundreds of sites. I like to nod (respectfully) toward the original CompuServe and friends. Useful at times. I occasionally get a little info from About.Com. But I never get the full answer I'm looking for there. Don't know what iTunes is? Mahalo and About.Com are great starts. Want to hack your Ubuntu Linux to play iTunes? Better find some UGC somewhere or else.

Today's UGC, if it isn't extremely temporal or base, is tomorrow's moderated and polished general information and all those sturdy sites.

Newsweek and its old school media pals believe, in their heart of hearts, that all information must be edited and packaged by professionals. And every week, some Joe Schmo from nowhere does something somewhere via UGC that out does anything we've seen before from the best journals, magazines, and television shows. They all have their place in the world. Despite the fears of the old school media, no one in the blogosphere and other UGC-mediums is advocating (or believing) that both can not peacefully coexist – each serving a worthwhile purpose. Yet, on the other side of the tracks, they probably have plans to assassinate Matt Mullenweg thinking their subscription rates will return to pre-2000 figures. They continually spew out nonsense (like this Newsweek article) that makes them look, well, suicidal.

Hey, bottom line: If they want to edit, package, and polish information in slick glossy magazines, all well and good. I haven't read a Newsweek magazine since 1987 (in high school) but I am a news junky. What magazines have I read since? Economist. Rolling Stone. Mother Jones. Wired. (and I'm a right-wing extremist). But those mags offer insight that I just can't find in Snooze Week with their little required book review column, their little required A/P world news beat, etc. Where's the insight? Where's the break throughs? I'd have to read 100 Newsweek magazines to get a really solid unique perspective. Else I wouldn't know if I was reading Time, or U.S. Snooze and World Distort. Who could know?

But I read a new and unique story every day on a blog somewhere. Or, for those that have the patience to watch videos (not me), they see something interesting on YouTube or some other video source. I just discovered winelibrary.tv. That guy is nuts and is super entertaining to watch – and I don't even drink Wine or care about it. I'd hate to see the twisted wreckage of Newsweek staffers even trying something like that. It would be like watching George Bush do the Salsa. (Sorry, El Presidente, love ya anyway!).

If N/W is going to keep hiring these dorks who don't know kuh-rap about the internet and think they can put their head under the covers for a few minutes and then write about their insights with any intelligence, they are going to be out of business soon. Ziff-Davis Media just bit the dust. Why? Because they have done nothing interesting for nearly 10 years as the net has gotten more interesting. I think every other issue was “25 Ways to Speed up Windows”. What? Let me guess… uh,… defrag my hard drive? I saw that same “tip” about 50 times over the past 10 years when I flipped through it and left it on the shelf.

Let me know when Newsweek hires John Dvorak from Ziff-Davis Media. Maybe I'll actually visit their website.