It's often a bitch to explain new media. None of this stuff makes much sense if you don't use it--and if you resist it. It's as irritating as it is opaque. Technology in the way it reduces and simplifies is, let's face it, vulgar. I usually explain Newser by saying, in more highfalutin language, there's all this free stuff out there, it's crazy not to use it (key the harrumphing of the traditional news community, who believe I'm a bastardizer, opportunist, and thief). I wish I could explain it better. I'm grateful that Scott Adams--Dilbert's creator--does.
One can only hope for a dedicated user like Adams who is, he said Tuesday in a blog post, "psychologically addicted" to Newser, feeling a need to check it "twenty times a day," for reasons that seem to confound him. "WTF," he declares.
Adams intervenes in the intellectual property debate by comparing free and linkable news to recipes. Recipes are freely distributed. Anybody can make anybody else's dish--still some versions are glorious, some execrable.
"Newser's business reminds me of cooking in the sense that there is no barrier to entry. Everyone has access to the same ingredients, which in this case is content from the Internet. Anyone can summarize that content and put it in little boxes on a website. Anyone can buy stock photos. But there's something else going on," he says.
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