I love it when old media (or their newer offspring) reaches out to new media. It tells me that some smart person has correctly concluded that bloggers are not competing with CBS News, CNN, etc.
I got a Comment to my Google post today from an intern at CBS asking me if I would consider writing about an upcoming series on CBSNews.com. It seems that starting on June 13, CBSNews.com will do a three day series of reports on the “intersection of teenagers and technology.”
CBS is encouraging people to write in with questions or concerns. The email link is in the story linked above.
This is certainly a timely topic and I look forward to reading the articles. I hope the series will be a substantive piece that talks to the right people and asks the hard questions.
Here are some topics I hope they cover:
1) The “fox guarding the henhouse” problem that naturally and inevitably arises when you ask a company like MySpace, which makes money off of traffic, to improve online security by imposing restrictions on the restriction-averse kids who make up the lion’s share of such traffic. It’s easy to hire some consultant to toss out a bunch of gimmes to the eager press, but taking the sort of hard and decisive action needed to be effective is another matter.
2) The emergence of Second Life and other similar sites as the new social network. I want to hear from the developers of these sites as well as parent and teacher groups as to what is being done to make these sites safe and what isn’t being done that ought to be. Second Life should be applauded for having its teen grid, but what I want to know is how easy is it for a kid to sneak into the adult grid and what does Second Life and others do to catch them whey they do.
3) The degree to which technology encroaches into the educational system as a disruptive influence. I can tell you from experience that a lot of the kids in the law school classes I teach are constantly surfing, chatting, etc.
4) And finally, I want them to find the person responsible for that idiotic, indefensible Tagworld ad and ask him to explain in great detail and defend the decision making process that led to that ad.
I’ll write again on this series once it starts.
Newsome.Org 