News from the Net

With only days before the national presidential election, the press is filled with stories about the tight race between Bush and Gore. I look forward to election night, after the polls close, and watching the television coverage of results. With a large map of the US the colors of the states will change to either blue or red as the networks predict winners based on polling data in key precincts. A tight race means lots of drama and high ratings. However, now that many press reports give George Bush a slight lead, I suspect we will see little drama and Bush will win by a comfortable margin. Well, at least a greater margin than a “tight race” would suggest. The drama will give way to backpedaling with lame explanations of why a cliffhanger (tightest since Nixon/Kennedy) race prediction was floated in the first place. Frankly, like so many Americans, I feel that entertainment value drives so much of the news that any true picture takes a backseat. Sad.

I stopped buying a daily newspaper. Like so many on the Internet, my view of the world is shaped, in large measure, by what I read on the Internet. Scary. Every day I follow the same ritual. My first exposure to the headlines comes when I turn on the browser and the iWon (www.iwon.com) homepage appears. After a brief scan, I download e-mail. Within the 200+ e-mails will be a reminder from World Net Daily (WND) reporting headlines from the online publication. Often, something strikes an interest and a click on the hotlinks takes me to the article.

The Agenda

While many WND articles come from AP, Reuters, Jerusalem Post, London Times, BBC News, New Zealand Herald, San Francisco Examiner, and other sources, there is a right wing tilt to the coverage. This becomes even more evident in pieces written especially for WND and should be taken into account when reading the articles. Like so much on the Net, the reader cannot take everything on face value. Frankly, I avoid much of the proprietary WND contributions and commentary. In spite of the limitations, breadth of WND coverage allows one to pick and choose news (national and international) of interest. The key factor is the daily reminder (tickler) and easy link to pieces.

Another daily online newspaper with the same general WND flavor is NewsMax (www.newsmax.com). Like WND, NewMax sends e-mail reminders but on a less frequent basis. Newsmax sends a more complete synopsis of the news pieces. For example, in the October 23 e-mail tickler, NewsMax listed the latest polling results: CNN/USA Today/Gallup Presidential Preference, ABC News Tracking, Voter.com Battleground 2000 Daily (weekdays), Portrait of America Tracking, Reuters/ MSNBC/Zogby Daily Tracking, NewsWeek – likely voters (October 18-20), NewsWeek – all registered voters (October 18-20), and CBS News/New York Times.

While many daily online newspapers send out reminders, without summaries, they hold no interest for me. Frankly, most Internetters find themselves awash in information overload. E-mail news summaries save the day.

The Drudge Report

Arguably the most controversial e-news site remains thedrudgereport.com. Drudge remains as outspoken as ever. Whether one agrees with Drudge or sees him as the bane of journalism, a major appeal of the site is the vast number of hotlinks to other news Web sites. Until recently, the site had no (or few) ads. The Drudge Manifesto, now on the NYT best sellers list, seems to have impacted the site. Now his site sports banner ads for a handful of books plus Windows ME (the upgrade to Windows 98) all linked directly to Amazon.com for easy ordering. During earlier days on the Internet, Drudge filled e-mail boxes across cyberspace with breaking news. These epistles have become infrequent and irregular. Perhaps just another sign that the Internet remains in constant flux.

As The World Turns

News reporting will never go out of fashion. The arrival of a growing number of surfers to the Web does not bode well for the future of traditional daily newspapers. E-mail ticklers, sprinkled throughout bundled e-mail downloads, now keep many informed of local and worldwide events. Often, the signup requires no more effort than entering an e-mail address into a subscription box on a news Web site. For those people not on a list, you might want to try it.

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of interest:

www.wnd.com

www.newsmax.com

www.thedrudgereport.com

(This is the 229th of a series of elementary articles designed for surfing the Internet. Next, “e-Mail Tips” is the subject on tap. Stay Tuned. Until next week, happy travels through cyberspace. Previous issues of “Internet Info for Real People” can be found: http://www.thebee.com. Please e-mail comments and suggestions: brand@JUNO.com or editor@thebee.com.)