From: glen mccready 
  To: Dead Beef <0xdeadbeef@substance.abuse.blackdown.org>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 15:33:07 -0400

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 09:38:02 -0400
From: Charlie <root@bsdi.com>
To: /dev/null@python.bostic.com
Subject: as [Time] ate crow in its July 24 edition...

Forwarded-by: mlinksva@netcom.com (Mike Linksvayer)

     EXCERPT.  Here is the opener for this week's News From the Net
column, available to clients of the New York Times News Service,
the most noble wire service of them all.  (Non-NYTNS client editors
may arrange for one-time rights by contacting columnist Charles
Stough directly at copyboy@dmapub.dma.org.)
                                ...
     Unwittingly, as it ate crow in its July 24 edition, Time magazine
underscored the power of the new Internet medium.
     Admitting fatal flaws in its earlier report of Internet
pornography -- a college student's "study" of computer porn lumped
private, adults-only links, called bulletin boards or "BBS's", with
the public Usenet special-interest groups shared by millions of adults
and children worldwide.  And it made appalling miscounts on the
statistical side.  And there were other errors, some of which Time now
admits.
     Usenet?  BBS?  Huh?  The difference is this.
     Imagine the world's busiest airport, its terminals chockablock with
millions of people and groups chattering away in all languages about all
subjects, its runways buzzing with cargo linking it to every other place
on the planet.  That's the Internet.
     Now imagine a tiny closet-sized lounge far past Gate 89-W, with a
"Members Only" sign on the door.  That's a BBS, trading its wares in
code, dealing through credit cards.
     If a BBS distributes pornography, it's in a digusting trade.  But
it's not public.  A child would accidentally stumble upon porn on the
Internet about as easily as a tot in O'Hare Airport would accidentally
wander into a locked frequent-fliers' club, order a pitcher of Singapore
slings and fax an order for $2 million worth of Botswanan war bonds to
the Bank of Tokyo.
     Someone at Time knew all this when it frightened moms with its
lurid cover story about Internet porn.  But not everybody at Time,
obviously.  (And how about the illustrations?  A naked man having sex
with a computer?  Come on, Time guys!).
     Now here's the fun part.  Time's shoddy reporting set off a
blizzard of rebuttal in the Internet itself, exposing Time's "scholar,"
his record of doubtful scholarship, salacious publishing of his own, and
the grievous research flaws in this study.  You can still see it and
even join the discussion, if you have a computer and modem and open the
Usenet group called alt.culture.usenet.
     Time had to back down.
     Once a world-class publishing powerhouse able to define truth with
its own vision, Time was beaten back by Internet users.  None had more
than a computer and a modem, and yet with the new power of the press --
the press of a button -- any of them could place an article before
millions of readers more than Time ever reached in its best week of
ink-on-paper printing.
     Is something new and wonderful going on in mass communications
now?  No.  What Time magazine's editors didn't know is that it already
had happened.

*********************************************************************
        The Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild's Newsletter
 <<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BONG Bull <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>
                      Charley Stough, Chief Copyboy
*********************************************************************
            Copyright (c) 1995 by BONG.  All rights reserved.