peripathetic

You read it *here* first, dammit
Or you would have if you'd been here first rather than buried in the newspaper. Dean's World blogs about the huge numbers of Americans (44% of the population, no less) who have *contributed information* to the internet. Couple that with the knowledge that journalists in national papers pay close attention to what's on the web, and then you realise why the papers look so... familiar these days.

In the past week, I've noticed 6 or 7 articles of a quirky nature in The Independent. Tech stuff, small interesting stuff, or bigger stuff which is still non-mainstream. I noticed the articles especially because I'd read the content as many as 2 weeks in advance - on the web. The BBC website today posted a story I'd heard about a week ago on Slashdot.

Here's the pattern: stuff gets posted on blog A. A journalist on newspaper C takes a look. Blog B links to it a couple of days later. So does blog D. Soon, blog A is filled with comments on the post, and then newspaper C's journalist decides it's interesting enough to publish.

Not that I'm knocking the papers or anything. But this is big stuff. Things of wide interest no longer have to appear for the first time in newspapers written by 'professionals'. They can, and do, appear on blogs written by, erm, Joe Bloggs.