| |
|
|
|
The Starr Report Hits the Internet
|
|
 | |
By any standards the Starr report was big news, with its lurid,
thong-flashing, cigar-manipulating highlights, but almost as big was the
way it reached the public: via the Web. Whatever political motives may have
been behind it, the decision to release the report on the Internet proved
something important: that the Web is an efficient means of distributing
large amounts of information to a mass audience quickly and accurately. TVs
could relay the report only as fast as a talking head could read it;
newspapers had to wait till the following morning. If you had web
access, you had the whole thing in seconds. Web sites that obtained copies
of the Starr Report posted record numbers of visitors.
Even as some pundits announced that the Net had "come of age" as a serious
medium for breaking news, others dwelled on the gap that still remains
between the wired and the unwired. Conservative writers focused on the
salacious, unedited nature of the report, which any unwary or underage
surfer could stumble on. But for good or ill, when Starr hit the Upload
button, the Internet became a mass medium that no one would ever ignore
again.
Related Coverage:
The Starr Report
TIME.com's Crisis in the White House
The Drudge Report
The Original Monica Lewinsky Fan Page
| |
|
