Do you remember Alfred Hitchcock’s radio show, and “The Night the World Ended?”
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(Watch the Hulu Video: Video of Hitchcock/Night the World Ended)
It was 1938 and Halloween. People were listening to the radio and Alfred Hitchcock was recreating HG Wells “War of the World’s ” on his radio show. If you’re young, you have no idea what I’m talking about. Here is a quick link to describe the prank that created real chaos and panic in the US! Read about the Hitchcock “prank”. Basically, it fooled people into believing the Earth was being invaded by Martians.
Now that Web Writing has invaded our world, is it time for us to panic?
What got me to think about this was a great article shared by a writer on Linked in. It’s post can be found at the Champlain College Publishing Blog and it’s called, “The Sequel to Equally Worthless, I think Not.” If you’re a writer, you should take the time to read it and share your thoughts too!
It discusses how the internet has changed the way writers are paid and how work is evaluated, valued, copied, or re-cycled. There are more great points and I highly recommend it! The link is at the end of this post, so if my writing begins to bore you, scroll to the bottom of the page and find out why this article is being raved about by “Moi”!
My thoughts after reading:
This is the comment I left on the blog:
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“This is a great article that I have to tweet on Twitter. You brought up so many great points. The internet makes it too easy for people to say their writing is “published” and the quality is not always there. If you visit Hubpages.com, some writers on the site are incredibly talented and may be the next Thoreau, while others write an average 4th grade essay. No matter what the quality, everyone is “published.” Does that diminish the profession and take away the respect that should be given to the true writers for sharing their creativity, intelligence or ability to make us think?
When I surf the web and happen to click an article that is terrific, informative and truly well written, the bookmark I link to it, reminds me it was a “lucky find.”
Writing is part craft, part learned, but alot of it in my opinion is a natural talent, mixed with skill, passion and intelligence. If you become well-known, it is part luck; but the talent has to be there. You can always recognize the true “writers” from the ”Knock-offs”.
Along with the variables that define the quality of online work , you have to consider how much the earnings for the work can differ.
What about earnings for a writer?
Should there be a general consensus of what our work is “worth”? How can one blog pay $25 for one article and the site three clicks away not pay their writers anything unless the Affiliate link is hit?
I’ve found with freelancing, some employers will pay $2 for 400 words, but the research alone took 3 hours. Real writers should be paid for their work, but as you pointed out; the internet is changing how media, news, magazines or books are valued. Now, with everything available online, what is the writing or reporting worth? A published e-book may not be worthy of a read; but was “published” because the person could pay a company to “publish” it.
Don’t misunderstand my point. There are excellent ebooks, better quality than some trade; but there is no rating to tell the reader before he buys the book if the ”author” wrote a great story or if it is from Miss Everett’s class around the corner. You may not know until you pay the $15 dollars and if you discover the book was poor quality, you feel scammed!
Blog protectors will help protect someone from “stealing” your work, but it’s too easy to say something is original, when only a few words were rearanged well enough that it wasn’t discovered by Copyscape.
Maybe there needs to be a rating on internet articles and e-books, so the reader knows the author is an amateur or has the skill to write like a pro. Should a company like Copy Scape be required to “patrol” the web as one means to stop people from plagerizing?
Where did the “reporter” get his “facts”? There should be real guidelines that are mandated, so misinformation and panic won’t strike. What would Alfred Hitchcock opinion be on this topic?
The internet created a new world for newspapers; Should the 4th grade writers be allowed to play on the same field with the Big Leagers? How do you prevent plagerism online or e-book scams?
Great article and as you can tell from my “long winded” comment, it was very thought provoking. You my friend are definitely not an amateur!”
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for!
This is the great article by Champlain College Publishing Initiative
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 
You make an interesting point about web 2.0 sites allowing people to claim they are “published,” when the value of the content and level of writing differ so widely from user to user. This is just the nature of the internet; it allows people of all persuasions to put themselves out there–as writers, as film-makers, as political pundits. I think it’s not necessarily a bad thing, as long as there exist tools with which to sort the wheat from the chaff. Many sites don’t have an effective way of doing this, but at HubPages, we have a unique scoring system that allows quality content to “bubble” to the top, and a fabulous moderation team to remove the most egregious offenders (spam, computer-generated articles, etc). I do believe every well-meaning would-be writer should have a chance to publish his or her content on the web. But not everyone should, or will, succeed as a writer. That’s the difference.
Maddie Ruud
Community Manager, HubPages.com
Thanks for all the kind words. Unfortunately, I now have to keep going and make something happen! So stay posted–as soon as I’ve finished a book that’s due by Monday, I’ll be back with further refinements on this whole subject. I’ll try not to let you down.
Cheers,
Tim