| ashu |
Posted
on 09-Mar-02 12:52 PM
Another article arguing that there is much intellectual content on the Web.
This, dedicated to the editors of The Himalayan daily newspaper
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
*******************************************
Point and think
The disappearance of many Web sites that challenged traditional media with smart, fresh essays and opinion was one of the worst results of the dot-com bust.
But as JEFF WARREN reports, a new, more collaborative intellectual model has grown up in their wake
By JEFF WARREN
March 2, 2002
Evolution of the Web
In the year or so since the great dot-com bust, disparaging the future of Web sites has been a fashionable pastime: The bubble has popped, the computer has crashed, the content sucks, the spirit is crushed. Pessimism has been particularly fierce with regards to intelligent, essay-based content sites.
The reason is obvious. So many Web readers frequented sites such as Feed, Word, Suck and Salon for news and commentary that when they downsized or closed, everybody noticed. Hip and immediate though they were, those sites were still basically magazines, with paid contributors writing regular articles in a more-or-less distinctive editorial voice.
They were in the same mode as the New Yorker (which finally launched its own site last year) - except that they had no print sales to back them up. They depended on advertising that mostly never materialized; as markets tightened, sites disappeared, and with them the apparent challenge to established media.
But, in fact, another kind of intellectual-content site has survived, one that makes much fuller use of the Web's unique structure. And the new model is flourishing.
The Web has always attracted a sizable minority of literate dissenters, interested in more than Limp Bizkit MP3s and streaming video-porn clips. While institutionally supported sites such as Slate (Microsoft), the Atlantic Online (Atlantic Monthly), and Brookings.org (Brooking Institution) remain important stopovers, they more and more feel peripheral to the main attractions.
Instead of self-contained essays, the Web's new intellectual hothouses offer diverse networks of opinion, and active participation. Reader power is where the Web really comes into its own.
More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/series/dot-com/
|
