Huffington Likes Our Obsessiveness

First of all, HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I hope you had a great Halloween.

Tomorrow, Arianna Huffington will speak at Ithaca College. In preparation for her talk, I read this article in which Huffington discusses some of the issues facing independent media and journalism as a whole, as well as some of the strengths of indy media. The thing I found most interesting was her assessment of how the obsessiveness of Internet users has strengthened coverage of some of the most important topics. Crowd-sourcing has become a highly successful way of reporting a story. Huffington used it to find information on lobbyists in the U.S.; other sites have used it for such things as the positions of super-delegates in the last election. Before the Internet, this method of reporting was never possible. Obviously, it has its own share of drawbacks, not the least of which is the possible issue of inaccuracy -- after all, everyday citizens aren't trained in grammar and fact-finding like journalism students and mainstream reporters are. Still, the method has its strengths.

I think Huffington said it best: "Mainstream media suffer from attention deficit disorder. New media suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder."

Check out the rest of the article for more on this issue, as well as Huffington's assessment of the Internet's ability to spread, and more importantly discredit, rumors. And, check back on the blog tomorrow for an update on Huffington's talk on campus.