Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
Walter Cronkite, the News, and the Challenges Facing Youth Today

An intelligent piece by Larry Magid, writing for CNET News about the challenges – as well as blessings – facing online youth today:

There’s something to be said for having access to thousands of media outlets. Unlike those of us who grew up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, young people who smartly use the Internet to consume news today don’t have to worry about everything being filtered by a small, elite, and typically white male cadre of journalists working for one of only three broadcast networks or one or two local newspapers. And it’s no longer a one-way street. Today’s news consumers can also be producers thanks to blogs, social-networking sites, YouTube, podcasting, and microblogs like Twitter.

But, as I look back at the career of Walter Cronkite, who died last Friday, I also worry that young people are finding it harder to come by trusted sources for news and information. The Internet’s strength as a news resource is also its weakness. We never will nor should return to the days of only a handful of media outlets, but today’s diversified media landscape and especially the Internet, do bring new challenges to consumers of news.

Magid lends a certain healthy awareness of “the way things were” in our past to our collaborative discourse about how they are today and will be in the future; this isn’t one of those “Back in my day” lectures of remorse, but rather a simple, honest examination of how society has changed – especially when it comes to how we get our news –and what the new challenges may be facing those growing up in a digital age.

Without an almost universally respected news anchor to tell us “the way it is,” we have to figure it out for ourselves. It’s not that we don’t have resources—we have more than ever and that’s a good thing. But it does put more pressure on us to think critically about what we see, hear, read, and say.

(Via KidScreen.)

Jul 22, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #