Viral news

/ 26 March 2008

Perhaps not surprising to anyone who would find this posting here on a blog, but the NYT reports that youth (surprise!) copy, link to, and share video and news. In fact, they seem to be replacing traditional filters (think CNN or NYT) with social filters (think Facebook and email).

Rather than treating video-sharing Web sites as traditional news sources, young people use them as tools and act as editors themselves.

“We’re talking about a generation that doesn’t just like seeing the video in addition to the story — they expect it,” said Danny Shea, 23, the associate media editor for The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com). “And they’ll find it elsewhere if you don’t give it to them, and then that’s the link that’s going to be passed around over e-mail and instant message.”

The Times notes, for example, that even at the NYT site the transcript of the Obama speech last week was more emailed than any story their reporters wrote about the speech. Why does that make me feel so good? Imagine, people are learning to reach out for primary sources. On the web!

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