Web Commonerprogressive politics, social commentary, and ramblings on pop culture

One day after FOX News released their latest findings inferring that “Americans” do not want Barack Obama’s healthcare plan, FOX News figureheads, Bill O’Reilly and Chris Wallace, jumped on the air to do some usual fact-twisting, spin-laden analysis, asking why the White House might be snubbing their network in its latest press junket to promote the president’s proposals …

According to O’Reilly, FOX News is the only network today that really matters, thanks mostly to a mysterious migration of so-called “independent” voters recently to Fox’s viewership. In the interview, O’Reilly and Wallace do their best to pretend that the network’s coverage is fair, yet Wallace appears surprisingly unrestrained while making statements like the Obama administration is the “biggest bunch of crybabies” that he ever saw, or blatantly circumventing fact by stating that the number of participants in the recent 9/12 tea-party protests in Washington DC added up to a “million, or hundred thousand, thousands, or tens of thousands.”

Almost in the same breath, O’Reilly attempts to drive home the point that the so-called “power shift” in the media is now with FOX News and talk radio, all because so-called “independents who make the calls” are, apparently, in bed with a news organisation that consistently distorts factual data, intentionally manipulates its audience, and injects subjective opinion into every story that it reports. Of course, what O’Reilly neglected to point out is that the Republican party is in shambles, desperately seeking to separate itself from the party’s pathetic reputation garnished within the last ten or so years, and undergoing an elusive transformation that gives way to a new, so-called “independent” mindset.

By redefining themselves as Independents, disoriented Republican dissidents see an opportunity to save face after enduring eight solid years of embarrassing let-downs under a leader who originally gave them great hope and inspiration. In reality, these so-called “independents” continue to think very much like old school Republicans, which means that they still need to rely heavily on their beloved news network to act as an official microphone for their new and developing political branch. Fortunately for them, specific, strategically placed personalities at FOX are available to serve as official spokespeople for the new, smoke and mirrors faction, despite the reality of their audiences being little more than recycled Republican viewers.

Traditionally, professional journalists steered clear of announcing party affiliation in a more objectively driven industry, holding to an unwritten rule that a journalist might project bias into coverage by revealing their personal views concerning specific policy issues. This is precisely why Bill O’Reilly makes it a point to highlight Chris Wallace’s past credentials, siting 11 years with ABC News, and subsequently mentioning Wallace’s biological father, 60 Minutes staple, Mike Wallace, all to link the FOX News Sunday host’s connections and experience to his assumed ability to host a “fair and balanced” television news show in 2009. Of course, the game is not what it used to be, and broadcast news has come a long way since the days of Mike Wallace and the halfway-objective journalist. Today, personal opinion-driven talking heads rule the 24-hour news circuit and, of course, FOX played a tremendous role in creating that environment.

One of the most prominent and popular characters to embrace so-called “independent” voters at FOX News is Glenn Beck, who took up full time residence there after moving his freakish road show to the network following a two-year stint with CNN. Launching one of the most strange and all-together scary live broadcasts in American television news history, Beck regularly uses the medium as an outlet to spew outlandish conspiracy theories that target the Obama administration and their so-called socialist agenda. He often touts his audience as one that represents all political persuasions, encouraging them to set aside petty political differences, and calling them to arms in a fight to take back a corrupt government. Of course, behind the scenes, Beck is well aware of the fact that his core following primarily consists of bitter, paranoid, and virile Republicans and Republican outcasts frustrated with corruption and bureaucracy, which actually came to a head at the hight of the previous administration. Of course, there is also another sliver of his audience who likely represent nomadic passerby’s, popping in and out on occasion, hoping to witness that predictable moment of self-sacrifice when Beck finally goes off the deep end.

Meanwhile, those who isolate themselves as independents on their voter registration cards are moving away from traditional broadcast news outlets, along with progressives, and taking residence online instead, mostly out of frustration for a devolving medium in television. Unfortunately, the people left behind are those who demonstrate a stubborn unwillingness to embrace new technologies, and subsequently have little choice but to follow FOX’s coverage as competing network ratings fall and content suffers as a consequence. Their pockets ere empty, and they see a government spending unprecedented amounts of money in a sweeping quest to restore the country’s economy. They turn to so-called independent voices like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, or Chris Wallace, and what they hear in those voices, no matter how fantastical or irresponsibly manipulative, stirs emotions into patriotic action and renewed political vibrancy.

Spending a good portion of my day tracking an erroneous article about a new Fox News poll is not my idea of a good time, but sometimes a person has to bite the bullet and endure a little self-induced torture, simply to get the necessary results that they’re so desperately seeking. Yesterday, I found myself halted half-way through a daily ritual of scanning the latest headlines on Google News after coming across a new poll indicating, “Americans Prefer Current System to Obama’s Health Care Plan.” This should be interesting, I thought, and rashly clicked the link.

As expected, the site brought me deep into the heart of FoxNews.com’s political section and their so-called “fair and balanced” coverage of today’s news. I read the article, by Dana Blanton, which concludes that a poll released by FOX News on Thursday, September 17, found that, “Most Americans see no upside for their family in the health care reforms being considered in Washington and don’t believe President Obama when he says his plan won’t add “one dime” to the federal deficit.” Given the detailed wording of these and other claims, I decided to let the raw data speak for itself.

Of course, the raw data was not available, and neither was the full poll results. In fact, clicking these links on the page got the following disparaging result:

Page Cannot Be Found

Okay, maybe Safari simply had a brain freeze, so I clicked the ‘back’ button and tried the links again. Still nothing, and at this point, the blood started boiling inside my head. Isn’t it irresponsible for a major news network to publish fact-based claims based on polling data that is not available to the reader? This point of contention was enough to propel me into registering at the news conglomerate’s website for the first time and expressing my reservations concerning the report:

by webcommoner[Sep 17, 2009 5:01:02 PM]
Surprise, surprise … links to view the “full poll results” and “raw data” explaining who, exactly, was polled are dead. Page Cannot Be Found How convenient, and how incredibly irresponsible. 5:00 PM EST

I checked back regularly throughout the day to monitor changes, even reinstating my search on Google News several times, but to no avail. Each time that I returned to the site, the raw data and poll results links remained broken, and more and more commenters saw it fit to note this obvious indiscretion. In fact, one of the last comments on the thread posted by edrivcol2112 at 3:47 AM on September 18, still demonstrated Fox’s indifference to these complaints, despite its grammatic fault:

“Fix the link showing the poll numbers are admit this is a fabrication, Fox News.”

The following morning, a subsequent Google News search yielded even more FOX News Poll stories, all based on the same raw data that was inconveniently absent the day before. Of course, this time, the “Americans Prefer Current System to Obama’s Health Care Plan” story linked to a new and separate page, finally making the poll data available to readers, but apparently ditching the comments that previously accompanied the story. Buried somewhere within the depths of FOX News obscurity, I thought, is a page with accompanying comments that question the story’s validity based on data missing from their website, and only a handful of people know.

Having a quick look at the results, which are now available, I scanned through the raw data and found information that is likely typical of a “fair and balanced” FOX News poll, including nothing that indicates whether or not their sample is random or where the telephone numbers that they used to perform the poll actually came from. Then, of course, there is a significantly high percentage of Independents interviewed, which seemed strange given the size of that party’s constituency, and a proportionately skewed ratio of blacks to whites questioned, which is concerning given the fact that the poll addresses issues of race. Finally, it seems convenient, at the very least, that blacks and whites appear to be the only ethnic groups available when the poll was conducted, which reflects data dating back to January, 2009.

A scan of the questions asked indicate a gross manipulation of verbiage, likely used to evoke emotion and provoke specific answers, like when interviewers ask, “how much attention do you feel Congress pays to what regular Americans think when it decides what to do.” Shouldn’t pollers excuse themselves from injecting subjective classifications concerning who is and who is not a “regular” American? Or, how about when FOX asks its subjects if, “you are more likely to: Vote for the Democrat to help Barack Obama pass his policies and programs,” in the next congressional election. Project much? The question that takes the cake, though, is the one that asks, “what do you think the president should be spending more time on right now – fixing the economy or reforming heath care,” as if he is unable to do both at the same time or, better yet, that both are not linked. I could go on, but you get the point.

Then, of course, there is that explosive cherry bomb that most pollers always seem to neglect when it comes to reporting coverage based on poll results, which is the fact that those questioned are only among “likely voters.” FOX then deems it appropriate to relabel these individuals, “Americans,” in their reporting and headlines, rather than call them what they really represent, a small cross-section of a much larger population. So, does FOX’s label for this group inherently imply that unlikely voters are un-American? Of course, scrutiny of the numbers themselves likely requires an infinite amount of patience, time, and due diligence that I am unwilling to yield at this point, and my guess is that FOX News viewers share the same sentiment, if they even care at all to check under the hood and see what’s driving the engine. Undoubtedly, Fox’s, “We report, you decide,” cabal not only depends on that notion, but lives and dies by it.

I was only four years old when Walter Cronkite relinquished his post as anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” and it would be many years into his retirement before I would understand and appreciate the true value of his character, or the full weight of his worth in terms of contributions that he made to the world of journalism and the respect he received from a nation of millions. My memories of Cronkite’s most popular moments are not unique, just recorded glimpses of the man’s stern yet warm delivery of the news as captured in time for the history books to later relay. Many in the baby boomer generation held him in such high regard that he earned the nickname, “Uncle Walter,” a testament to his ability to invade their living rooms each night with the sense of a beloved family member. They welcomed him with open arms, sometimes to receive some of the most disheartening news to hit the nation in the last half-century.

In Cronkite’s time, television was different. People peered into CRT monitors spilling duotone images of black and white into their living rooms. Sound came from a single channel, and “rabbit ear” antennas topped TV sets to receive the only signals available to viewers at the time, broadcasts from three major networks captured over the air. Of course, three networks meant three channels, which broadcast news programming for little more than 30 minutes each night. There was no means for recording what you missed, which meant that information-savvy citizens always knew exactly where they would be and what they would be doing once Walter hit the airwaves to deliver the daily news. At the evening’s end, the sound of a single tone and a screen-saver-like image indicated the end of a network’s daily programming, as if acting as an alarm to alert sleepy Americans that they overstayed their visit to TV land.

This nightly ritual between Cronkite, his network, and his constituency continued for nearly twenty years, through the civil rights and women’s liberation movements, the first lunar landing, Vietnam, Watergate, the Nixon impeachment, and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy Jr., Senator Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He endured sweeping change within the business of broadcast news, including the introduction of new competing networks, finally relieving himself of his duty not long before federal action brought cable technology to people’s homes in droves, along with a multitude of new channels. Cronkite seemed to disappear from public life temporarily, but a new generation of news hounds were fortunate enough to rediscover the man after he broke silence to deliver opinion-oriented editorial pieces in publications and on the radio throughout the last decade, which focused on everything from politics to the media.

It was in these moments, on the quiet drive home from work, that I welcomed Walter Cronkite, now a seasoned veteran, into my world. I listened intently as his signature voice, confident and adept, brought me into those old living rooms to relive crucial turning points in our country’s sorted history. His radio essays drew heavily on decades of professional experience, reflecting the challenges that he and his colleagues faced as reporters tasked to cover emotionally charged and politically sensitive events with objective eyes and ears. As I look back at Mr. Cronkite’s career, it would appear to me that his legacy is not really about how he delivered the news to millions each night. Instead, it’s about how he delivered information to people that was pure and unfiltered. Walter leaves this world at a point in our history when an evolving news landscape seeks to, once again, change how we organize and deliver new information. His legacy will serve as a sort of signpost, steering us clear from selfishly seeking out information that we want to know and instead pointing us in a direction towards getting the information that we need to know.

Thanks Uncle Walter. We will remember you always.

New evidence of Michael Jackson’s influence is popping up throughout the Internet in the form of tributes to the deceased entertainer. Friends and fans alike are passing along links to websites like Eternal Moonwalk, where a continuous loop of home videos shows people performing Jackson’s signature move. Other homages highlight his artistic genius, and one particular YouTube user is publishing video mash-ups that combine Jackson’s music with old footage of song-and-dance icons perceived to be his artistic inspirations from entertainment’s past. Check out the following series of clips that chronicle evidence of a historical evolution behind what eventually came to be Michael Jackson’s “Moonwalk.”

Other videos on the page carefully combine edited clips of “West Side Story” with Jackson’s “Beat It” and “Bad,” or clips of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse dancing to Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” all skillfully crafted to demonstrate the entertainer’s obvious affinity towards show tunes, and their influence on his music, dance and videos. The significant difference between those historical gems and Jackson’s own art are the media that presented them, the silver screen versus MTV and the boob tube, which invariably led me to ponder how artistic influence gets recycled over time and through different mediums. As technology evolves and cultures change, valued art from the past gets passed on to succeeding generations, and shared influence continues to turn the wheels of inspiration, progress, and innovation.

Recently, Coldplay’s smash hit, “Viva La Vida,” sparked controversy over whether or not the British band lifted their song’s signature tune from an earlier recording of Joe Satriani’s “If I Could Fly.” The Internet and, more specifically, YouTube, became a sort of advanced interactive medium for fans to compare the music, discuss its transference, and indirectly share its inspiration and influence. To make matters more interesting, convincing compositions by other musicians including Enanitos Verdes and Cat Stevens got thrown into the mix, spanning almost twenty years of artistic works that seemingly influenced other works. Much of the matter’s discussion seems reminiscent of conversations that took place at the turn of the century when advances in production technologies brought Hip-Hop culture from block parties to the recording studio as artists began sampling old recordings to create entirely new music compositions.

In a society that sets high standards on the use of copy-written material, technology is once again testing the limits of artistic progress, and rekindling conversations that take place over the influence of past works. In the United States, arguments over copyright material are historically settled within the confines of America’s courtrooms, but new ideas fostering the free sharing of information via the Internet threatens to blow the hinges off the system’s doors. In the not-so-distant past, peer-to-peer sharing showed signs of destroying the business of record companies, which held a monopoly on music distribution, and lawsuits only gained them enough time to restructure their business models. Today, social networking sites like YouTube are excellent examples of mediums that allow for gross sharing of artistic property and ideas. Meanwhile, a new generation of entrepreneurs is setting aside outdated practices of intellectual protectionism by embracing a culture of sharing, most notably in open-source software development.

Regardless of which way the wind blows on future copyright law, shared influence among artistic works remains a powerful force that inspires human progress and innovation through time, a sort of transference of such subtle references to the past that they can quickly and easily be forgotten. Throughout human history, the past is what shapes our future and, since the day we learned to stand upright and speak, that yearning to share what we know and how we came to know it lingers within, like the blood flowing through our veins. It’s generally accepted that you cannot get something from nothing, especially within the spectacular realm of the shared human experience. So, without Copernicus, there would be no Galileo. Without Greek philosophy, no Roman democracy. Without Chuck Berry, no Beatles and, of course, without Fred Astaire, no Michael Jackson.

While nervously stumbling through a nearly 20 minute speech at a press conference in Alaska last week, Sarah Palin officially announced that she will resign from her post as governor in the coming weeks. Despite spewing a hodgepodge of approximately 3,000 words at a news media tasked with deciphering her language, I am hard-pressed to find a coherent quote from Palin that successfully summarizes her reasoning behind the decision.

Fidgeting through the exchange, her reasons for leaving involve (prepare yourself) energy independence, politics, media, federal stimulus money, “frivolous” accusations of ethics violations, wounded soldiers, and her family’s encouragement to positively effect change via outside endeavors. Palin stressed the latter point on several occasions, also arguing that her lame duck status would only influence further squandering of Alaska’s time and resources. The governor is not interested in politics as usual, she said, and her time would be better spent pushing the politics of change from outside the state of Alaska.

So, there you have it. Painfully cryptic yet fairly obvious evidence that Sarah Palin is positioning herself for a 2012 shot at the presidency. Given that Palin’s name surfaces whenever the media seeks confirmation on who will take the lead of her downtrodden party, the entire situation seems best suited for the likes of one Karl Rove. Could it be that he paid Palin a visit and offered free grammar and public speaking lessons in exchange for a White House bid? After suffering through 20 minutes of rambling political innuendo and offensive posturing, I’m 99.9% certain that we have not heard or seen the last of Sarah Palin, and her run from the governor’s mansion will likely lead to a more significant run for the highest office in the land.

In the late nineties, Karl Rove presented another governor, George W. Bush of Texas, with a proposition. He would lead the former alcoholic, average student, lackluster business and oil man, and lame duck governor to the White House based primarily on two overarching pre-requisites … Bush was the son of a former president and an evangelical Christian. Rove, a master of manipulation, understood that Bush could carry middle America with the proper motivation and the right message. Today, the popularity of Palin among conservative Christians reveals a renewed opportunity that could allot Rove a second shot at the White House.

Would it work this time around? If our history is any indicator, Rove would certainly have a chance at success, and it would be unwise not to act. As any good propagandist knows, people with little power also have short attention spans. Rove demonstrated his understanding of this tenet when he brought back some of America’s most loathed and controversial figureheads from the Regan era including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. So, it would not surprise me to see controversial figureheads from the Bush cabinet pop up in a 2012 Palin administration, especially Condoleezza Rice or Alberto Gonzales.

In 2000, a bumbling George Bush charmed and cheated his way into the presidency by appealing to the proud sense of inner ignorance embodied by his constituency’s base. Sarah Palin symbolizes that same spirit of hypocritical moral ambiguity, and it seems safe to assume that Karl Rove might envision the same feat in her that he did in George Bush. All of us can recite that timeless idiom from Texas … or is it Tennessee, “Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me … you can’t get fooled again.” Well, when the time comes, I certainly hope that Sarah Palin’s opponents, Barack Obama among them, are fully prepared to take on the forces of Rovian rhetoric that fooled us once, stopping Palin and her morally-favored family unit in its tracks and preventing them from fooling us again.

For some, Michael Jackson’s sudden death at 50 was sweet in the sense that it fostered a tremendous sense of love around the globe. He was such a beloved figure by so many people, and that love is reciprocating itself tenfold in their remembrance of a man who inspired and encouraged them to be better human beings. For others, it was bitter because he led such a tragic and tortured existence, one that was oftentimes difficult to witness and even harder to understand. For me, it was both. Many years ago, I let go of a person so incredibly admired throughout my childhood, not because of the legal accusations filed against him or the media crucifixion that followed, but simply because I no longer recognized him.

As I grew into adulthood, my childhood obsession with the King of Pop faded with his physical appearance, a face that no longer seemed to resemble the one I came to love and respect. At times, when I thought about Michael, it brewed within me a battle for my own conscience, fought over whether or not physical appearance should matter when it comes to respecting a good friend, or at least the perception of one. When all is said and done, I don’t think it was his physical appearance that truly bothered me. Instead, it was this nagging feeling from within that the man was on an inevitable path towards self-destruction, altering his body in what seemed to be a perfectionist’s pursuit to manifest the impossible. For many of us, the haunting question when it comes to Michael Jackson is what made a person so talented, loving, and caring drive him to do such unspeakable things to an already flawless appearance.

Much of the short term blame is placed on an alleged addiction to drugs, specifically painkillers, which may have contributed to Jackson’s visibly increasing physical frailty. The long term blame, though, is often directed at Joe Jackson. His brutish nature is no secret and many tabloids drew attention to it throughout Michael’s career, long before I matured to a point of understanding its effect on a child’s growth. In fact, most people don’t seem to deny that any of the Jackson kids really appreciate their father for relentlessly pushing them into superstardom long before they were ready to accept and understand the consequences of that reality. Joe Jackson forced his youngest son into the spotlight at the age of five, who proceeded to spend his entire childhood singing and dancing on stage in front of adults, and mingling with adult entertainers. Throughout his career, Michael made it known to the media and his fans the physical and mental abuse that he suffered at the hands of his father when he was a young boy.

So, the King of Pop spent close to 50 years trying to manufacture a childhood that he never had, and he wanted to spend that childhood with others in the same manner that he imagined spending it all those years back. Michael’s tragedy lies in the fact that his physical form matured much faster than his mind, which was seemingly held to stagnation at some point in his turbulent past. His brain was poised to keep the man a child, with a child’s heart, while his body compelled him to physical feats that undoubtedly made him the world’s most favored entertainer. He became an unprecedented and unbelievable talent, and his new fame brought with it a lavish lifestyle that most people, let alone children, would ever have the opportunity to experience or even dream. Ultimately, it skewed the balance between reality and fantasy, and tragically led to Michael’s bittersweet demise.

Michael, may you rest in peace, and may those who never truly understood your brilliance or even sympathized with your situation at least come to accept the unfortunate circumstances that made you different. As we continually seek to someday heal the world, we need only look as far as the mirror to do it.

Last week, authorities in Nevada arrested a Utah man after he bragged to bank tellers while clearing his account that he planned to kill the president. This week, a madman strolled into the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and opened fire on a security guard, killing him before other guards successfully took him down. Shortly after police apprehended and identified the suspect, the press picked up on his predictable ties to prominent Neo-Nazi and white supremacist hate groups. Apparently, he identified most with the cause of people who proudly deny the Holocaust and likely spend a significant portion of their days finding ways to justify their ignorance through the hatred of minorities or, more specifically, African Americans and Jews.

In April, the Department of Homeland Security released a report that warned of rising right-wing extremism. Meanwhile, the country elected its first African American to the highest office in the land, which sent gun-nutters into a weapons buying frenzy that would further empower the NRA and its massive lobby. So, coupled with the rhetoric spewed to the masses from pre-pubescent conservative television and radio personalities, this trend should be a bright, bustling-in-the-wind, red flag to all concerned citizens. Be on the lookout for bitter, right-wing extremists who are incredibly prejudiced and equally pissed about the election of a minority. Their anger might be so potent that they would be willing to lay down their lives and commit atrocious acts of violence against innocent people, which could include you, a friend, or a loved one who happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

In today’s digital age, the Internet’s near open exchange of information never ceases to amaze, and I feel fortunate to be a member of the generation that stood front and center as the web progressed from infancy into adulthood. As a teenager, I remember feeling stunned the first time a friend messaged me in real time using a desktop computer. Now, we carry the computer in our pocket and rely heavily on the Internet to communicate, conduct business, educate, and entertain. In hind sight, it isn’t shocking to know that entire industries would be forced into an evolutionary state of emergency as they struggled to stay afloat in a rapidly changing environment, and the two we hear about most are music and print.

Both were unequipped and ill-prepared for the mass exodus that occurred after digital technology freed their subjects, and forced a need to update their business plans and models. People who felt used by an industry profiting twofold on the sale of compact discs, which cost pennies to produce, suddenly had the upper hand and simply stopped buying music. Still, all it took was an organized, reasonably priced distribution system built off the convenience of the Internet to revitalize the market, and it was an innovative computer company that put the first foot forward. Meanwhile, the music industry was caught, virtually, with its pants down.

Now, it’s the print industry’s turn to share some of the embarrassment. Sure, publishers made moves years back towards digitizing their business by offering content online, but they clung desperately to the newspaper model and refused to strip off the blinders in anticipation of a time when subscribers would ditch the big front page for a smaller, more personalized screen. Almost ten years out of college, I can recall professors in my own communications courses who predicted a future without traditional media, focusing instead on “the box,” a single-unit device that would contain everything a person could possibly need. So, was it straight denial or simple ignorance that prevented media owners and managers to effectively plan for the big changes that awaited their industry.

What seems most ironic about their lack of preparedness is their density when it comes to understanding how Web 2.0 technology might help sustain their survival. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t the media mergers and acquisitions that permeated the industry throughout the last two decades provide the necessary momentum for companies to invest heavily in new technologies and research ways to reach evolving demographics, you know, before it’s too late? Three years ago, Amazon introduced the world to Kindle, a portable reading device with the ability to download published content. That’s right, folks, Amazon. A company that has been in existence almost 15 years stepped up to the plate and met a challenge that major newspaper conglomerates, whose roots could technically classify them as antiques, claimed they didn’t even know existed.

Now, these entities are in trouble and many argue that the fabric of free press is unwinding as they reach to the state for assistance. Industry gatekeepers are quick to shine a light on companies like Google as the source of their problems, an organization whose innovative technologies actually help to direct traffic to their websites and organize advertising into a profitable source of income for online businesses. These dispatches of blame are little more than scapegoats for industry captains who knowingly ignored the coming tide of change, choosing instead to focus on diminished quality to increase profits in the short term. Today, the result is a digital transference of industry, with ideas of promising Web 3.0 technology plowing forward towards an updated press that utilizes interactive social networks, blogs, and online forums to produce and deliver the next generation of news, despite a lack of participation from its traditional counterparts.