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The Lowdown
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Jan. 12, 2009 Post
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Here's the The
Lowdown from DNJournal.com! Updated
daily to fill you in on the latest buzz going
around the domain name industry!
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Compiled
by Ron Jackson
(DN Journal Editor/Publisher) |
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As
online distribution of news replaces
traditional print platforms, the old system
of gatekeepers deciding who could
report the news and what news consumers
would be allowed to see or hear is being washed
away once and for all. When I graduated from
broadcasting |
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school I had to
find a radio or TV station willing to hire me,
otherwise there was no way I was ever going to
be seen or heard.
Many of my
classmates from those days never found a job in
journalism, leaving them no choice but to make a
living in some field other than the one they
had dreamed of working in. If the Internet
had existed then, they could have bypassed the
newspaper, radio and TV station managers and put
their talents on display worldwide (and
unfiltered) via the web. |
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I
came across a great example of this in a Minneapolis
Star-Tribune article published
Sunday about a local student newspaper that put
their publication online to prevent school
officials from censoring what they wrote. The
district school superintendent actually shut
down the Fairbault High School
newspaper last month because the student editors
refused to let him see an article before
publication about the investigation into a
middle-school teacher.
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Jason
Wallestad, the owner of School
Newspapers Online (a company that
creates websites for student
publications) heard about the situation
and stepped in to help the students move
their paper, The Echo,
online, using the domain TruthWithEcho.com.
Wallestad said, "Our goal is to
help student journalism as much as we
can. We wanted to make sure they had a
chance to keep publishing." Echo
editor Christen Hildebrandt said
the publication will continue to cover
school news and events, but won't have
any association with the district or use
any of its resources. Because the
website isn't funded by the district,
administrators have no control over
content. The district |
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superintendent,
Bob Stepaniak, admitted he had
been over-ruled by the web. "Any
group of students could put together a
website like that. That's the way
life is in this electronic age,"
Stepaniak said. |
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And
so another gatekeeper learns that today everyone
has a key to the lock. All you need
is a domain name and a hosting
account (each of which can be had
for under $10) and you have an
uncensored media platform capable of
reaching every corner of the globe.
I'm still amazed |
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by that and
certainly the role that domain names
play in making that possible are one of
the primary reasons I was attracted to
this business in the first place.
I look at
every domain name I own as a potential
global media outlet. I recall that
the owners of the first radio station I
worked at as a teenager paid half a
million dollars for the tiny AM
station in central Ohio that
covered a radius of no more than 15
miles. Contrast that to paying $8
for a domain name (and about the same
for hosting) for a "transmitter"
that reaches the entire planet.
That has to be the greatest bargain
in the history of human communications. |
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(Posted
Jan.
12, 2009) |
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