Give the 'Net credit

This is what multimedia journalism needs to do, and now is the time for it. In that final, students gave presentations on the process behind their stories. Over and over again, they mentioned that people just don’t know what’s going on around them. Many of their projects started out as diatribes but ended up as simple educational pieces. This is what good journalism does, I emphasized. It informs people, and sometimes, simply informing them will make people start caring.

So am I being alarmist in thinking bit.ly’s supplanting of tiny.url on Facebook is a conspiracy of Big Brother proportions? Yeah, probably. I’m thinking it’s more about saving two letters from the 140 Twitter offers on the 200 or so that fit in the newsfeed on Facebook. In fact, I applaud the innovation.

I understand spammers are active. I understand they are persistent. But if I can combat them on my little old blog with a free add-on, it’s ridiculous that AOL can’t. Any organization that enables comments on its site must have a spam blocking solution even if it means actually hiring someone to read the comments. It’s basic Internet etiquette.

Actually, I think the perfect replacement, based on the outstanding work he has done on The Daily Show is Lewis Black. He’s a bit edgier that Rooney, but he’ll attract an entirely new audience for the network. I’d start tuning in again for more reasons that the start of the Amazing Race was pushed back by football. A new generation needs to see the good work correspondents such as Scott Pelley, Steve Kroft, Leslie Stahl, Byron Pitts, Bob Simon and Lara Logan are doing. But it’s less likely to happen as long as Rooney’s in his old roost.