Most of us get our news from pretty conventional sources - the news seems to
reflect the interest and the attitudes of the mainstream. Some people may
complain that a particular news source may be biased, or may not be reporting
the stories people ought to (or want to) know about; but someone is
watching the standard news broadcasts, reading the usual daily newspapers
and the weekly or monthly magazines.
For those with Internet access however, it has become much easier to find
alternative news sources. Perhaps you don't enjoy the editorial viewpoints
of newspapers that are owned by Hollinger? Maybe you want to see more in-depth
coverage of environmental issues? Or maybe you want catch up on the latest
gossip out of Washington? It is all on the Internet.
So where do you start? It depends, in part, on where your interests lie.
If you consider the Internet part of your community and want to keep up
with news there, try Wired. It
has been around long enough and is well-established enough to be almost
mainstream, although I suspect that this partly reflects on how the online
community has changed in the last decade - a much broader slice of the
population has a stake in the Internet, both as users and investors.
You'll find articles on business, culture and technology, as well as other
links.
If you are interested in the lives of people at the lowest rungs of the
Internet business ladder, you might enjoy
NetSlaves.
I spent a lot of time at
www.disinfo.com. Internet fraud, Biblical
prophecies, famous scientists and much more. Be warned, having your site
highlighted here is not always a good thing.... There is no lack of
stuff to catch one's eye there. The site is not particularly
Lynx-friendly however.
Mario's Cyberspace Station
has plenty of interesting material. China, the Balkans, Kashmir, the
CIA World Fact Book and links to news web-sites, organized by country, to
name but a few. All in all, more than 400 pages linking to news archives
worldwide. There was some bad HTML when I visited - Lynx can manage,
but Netscape crashed. And crashed. And crashed. Turning off JavaScript in Netscape's
Options (or Preferences, depending on your version) stopped this though.
The Drudge Report, famous (or is
that notorious) for having brought the Clinton-Lewinsky affair to public
attention is actually less gossipy than I had expected. It has links to many
syndicated columnists (as diverse as Dave Barry, Bill Buckley and Roger
Ebert), as well as major news organizations like AP, UPI and Reuters.
If you would like to look around for some alternative information
sources, try the
Wiley World links.
It is an interesting list. You can also try any of the search
engines, using keywords for topics that are of particular interest to you.
Alternative internet news sources are now quite common and
will no doubt become more so as time goes on: they can start up
with next to no expenses, can target any specific audience segment,
and the lack of content "filtering" that happens in
the conventional media provides them with an edge over the older,
slower traditional news outlets. The high level of competition between
the online resources also provides incentive for accurate reporting:
the web audience will quickly go elsewhere if they are being lied to or
misinformed by a news site.
You may direct comments or suggestions about this
article to:
Margaret C. Douma, ac101@chebucto.ns.ca
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