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Misadventures In Online Journalism
An anonymous reader writes "Paul Carr, writing for TechCrunch, has posted his take on some of the flaws inherent to today's fast-paced news ecosystem, where bloggers often get little or no editorial feedback and interesting headlines are passed around faster than ever. His article was inspired by a recent story on ZDNet that accused Yahoo of sharing the names and emails of 200,000 users with the Iranian government; a report that turned out to be false, yet generated a great deal of outrage before it was disproved. Carr writes, 'Trusting the common sense of your writers is all well and good — but when it comes to breaking news, where journalistic adrenaline is at its highest and everyone is paranoid about being scooped by a competitor, that common sense can too easily become the first casualty. Journalists get caught up in the moment; we get excited and we post stupid crap from a foreign language student blog and call it news. And then within half a minute — bloggers being what they are — the news gets repeated and repeated until it becomes fact. Fact that can affect share prices or ruin lives. This is the reality of the blogosphere, where Churchill's remark: that "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on" is more true, and more potentially damaging, than at any time in history.'"
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Red sun rising somewhere through the dense fog.
The portrait of the jaded dawn who had seen it all before.
This day wept on my shoulders.
Still the same as yesterday.
This path seems endless, body is numb.
The soul has lost its flame.
Walking in familiar traces to find my way back home.
So there I was.
Within the sobriety of the immortals.
A semblance of supernatural winds passing through.
The garden sighs, flowers die.
The gate was closed that day, but I was bound to carry on.
She could not see me through the windows.
In dismay, strangest twist upon her lips.
Graven face, she said my name.
Once inside I heard whispers in the parlour.
The gilded faces grin, aware of my final demise.
And I cried, I knew she had lied.
Her obsession had died, it had died.
When can I take you from this place?
When is the word but a sigh?
When is death our lone beholder?
When do we walk the final steps?
When can we scream instead of whisper?
When is the new beginning,
the end of this sad MADRIGAL.