Neil Sanderson

In another sign of the times, the Pew Research Centre reported today that, in the United States at least, the internet has “surpassed all other media except television as a main source for national and international news.” (emphasis mine)

Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%.

But TV execs shouldn’t be complacent. Among the under-30s polled by Pew, internet and television use for national and international news was just about equal. That’s a huge change from last year, when TV was almost twice as popular as the net in this age group.

Craig Silverman of Regret the Error has released his 2008 list of bizarre, alarming and downright funny corrections from newspapers and websites.

The entire list is worth a read, but this one caught my eye, pointing out the dangers of too much automation in web publishing:

The American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site has a standard practice of using the word “homosexual” instead of “gay.” They even set up a filter to automatically make the change. This didn’t serve ONN well when a sprinter named Tyson Gay made news at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials. He suddenly became Tyson Homosexual when the site’s filter got a hold of an AP story:

Apart from the obvious question of why anyone want to change “gay” to “homosexual”, it’s fun to think of how many other names could be similarly mangled.

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