Since the launch of The Other News several months ago, a very innovative publishing system has been refined that allows writers, photographers, editors and interns, (all News Team members), to submit articles, images, research papers and related information online with the greatest of ease and is truly, a virtual press office environment headquartered in cyber-space.
This automated process will help to facilitate the formation of what could be one of the World’s largest alternative news organizations. It is a very ambitious, but reasonable goal when considering the phenomenal ability of the World Wide Web to quickly attract mass audiences. Further, the proliferation of alternative news sites and news bloggers sprouting up everywhere in an attempt to fill the quality-of-information void currently left unattended by Mass Media, is more reason for TON to be successful. It could also evolve into a central web presence for other alternative news sites and sources, which are invited to join the soon to be announced “TheOtherNewsNetwork.com”. (Contact TON for information.)
Now in the journalist outreach phase, TON has also automated the news team application and review process to encourage accomplished, as well as aspiring journalists to join the effort. Several team members have already been approved and are currently submitting articles. But many more are needed in order for TON to be successful in it’s foremost objective; to bring serious alternative perspectives to what main stream TV Network News presents. That’s why the site is so aptly named “The OTHER News”.
It is also hoped that TON will be able to help counter, as well as explain, real and perceived news bias that is debated so often recently. Conservatives usually make the general assumption that the Media is liberal while Liberals make the exact opposite assertion. In recent years, some news outlets are voluntarily abandoning their responsibility to the public of reporting objective news and purposely catering to a politically specific audience with an obvious bent toward their favored views and opinions. One “good” thing about this development is that at least we are beginning to see something other than exactly the same stories reported in much the same manner by the top three, and now more TV Networks day after day. This practice has been in effect for decades, mainly in order to more or less evenly divide the overall market share and the resulting advertising revenue. One has to ponder the amazing coincidence of what a handful of “competing” TV news networks determine newsworthy on any particular day. It’s as if these news directors’ minds are telepathically connected. In reality this complicity is simply to cover their backsides to be sure if any story is reported elsewhere, it had better not be overlooked by them. And the media bandwagon plays on in almost perfect harmony.
One bad thing about all of this is that public trust in the news, heretofore mostly maintained by the Press, is now in shambles and high disrepute. Now people can see only what they want to see, and are therefore blinded to other perspectives that might otherwise shed new light on areas where they may be less than informed. This becomes a self-imposed tunnel vision that prevents them from even considering, what might be a more accurate view of reality.
The Other News will have a tremendous challenge encouraging people to open their minds to alternative perspectives, especially at this most politically polarized era since Vietnam. TON won’t be successful in making everyone happy all the time. But if it can at least become a reliable source of the unreported, omitted and neglected facts, TON will be a success. If people are suspicious of what they see on TV Network News, they’ll know that they can get an alternative perspective from TON.
Conservative or Liberal; left, right or center; Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian or people with any ot
