I’ve been thinking about this comic strip for a while. What would happen if ‘real’ journalism disappeared? Not much. There would just be more money to pay news bloggers. Besides, ‘real’ journalists aren’t really real, after all. They’re just as fake as anyone else.
But the self-referencing thing really gets to me sometimes. Someone writes an article, perhaps announcing something, or reporting on something. Sometimes this is a blogger, sometimes it’s an online version of a newspaper, etc. Then, a bunch of people link it, and link it, and link it. For every original article, there’s ten or a hundred links. Now, on one level, this is simply how people find out about things. But it does seem a bit worthless at times to read the same article, with minor commentary, on ten sites!
And then there’s the clearinghouse sites. Slashdot for computer friendly people, Feministing for feminists (for the most part), etc, etc. Someone writes an article, a bunch of people link it, it gets popular, a clearinghouse site picks it up, even more people link it, ad infinitum.
Let’s reduce redundancy! Let’s link to whole sites and blogs as well as articles. And let’s only link to really interesting things, not to everything that moves. Less redundancy == more information consumed. (I don’t know who I think I’m talking too – the few people who read this probably don’t have the problem! It’s the people who run the big site that are really responsible. Oh, well)