Media Curmudgeon

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April 09, 2005

Creeping Credibility for the Internet

I don't read the New York Times Book Review every Sunday, but most Sundays. This week in his "TBR: Inside the List" column Dwight Garner writes about Ian McEwan's new novel Saturday (the sub-head is "Warming up to McEwan") and Garner quotes Jesse Kornbluth:

"McEwan's novel, as Jesse Kornbluth writes on Bookreporter.com, takes over your life: 'You wish you didn't have to eat, you despise the ringing phone, you wouldn't mind if you had a catheter.'"

This is the first time I have seen the lofty Times quote an online source in the Book Review. In the same column, Garner quotes the Washington Post and NPR, both highly credible sources, in addition to Jesse in Bookreporter.com, which puts the Internet site on the same credibility level of the Washington Post and NPR.

In a comment on my 4/5 "No Way, Bob" blog, Jesse asked if CBS closes CBS News, as I had suggested, "will it adjust 'news standards' to the more relaxed standards of the Internet?" I wrote that the standards of legitimate news sites such as CNN, MSNBC, AP, Reuters, and others were high and were credible.

I think the fact that Garner in the Times quotes Bookreporter.com attests to the creeping credibility of the Internet.

And speaking of NPR and McEwan's Saturday, I listened to both on my iPod. I listen to podcasts of "On the Media," which won a well-deserved Peabody Award this week and "The Brian Leher Show" and "The Leonard Lopate Show".

Podcasting gives me "sovereignty over text" (an academic term for consumer control and choice) and overcomes the linear access limitations of the broadcast media and gives me the type of random access print and the Internet provide, which is a major reason why the Internet will slowly replace the linearly accessed broadcast and cable media unless radio, television, and cable can provide random access in the form of podcasting, video on demand, and tivoing. (It's interesting that tivoing is becoming a generic phrase just as xeroxing became a generic phrase for copying paper, now it's copying programming, but it's the same concept.)

I found that listening to audio books is in many wasys more satisfying for me than reading a book, but perhaps that's because I have an auditory learning style. But what this means is that I can now choose a content input system that matches my learning style. Is technology great, or what?

Let's hear it for the creeping credibility of the Internet, for McEwan's book Saturday, for Bookreporter.com, and for The New York Times for helping turn the creep into at least a fast walk.