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Tuesday, 01 September 2009 14:13 |

Editorial

By Ryan Brink

As a young adult in Williams Lake I am very excited to be working on this website. Finally, a news source that is keeping up with technology. And not just a news source that keeps up with the latest gossip in pop culture, but one that reports LOCAL news as it is happening. I think that young adults in Williams Lake have been losing exposure to relevant news sources over the years. This website has the power to give awareness back through a convenient avenue we youth especially are very comfortable with.

My generation isn’t exactly the generation of patience. We want things now -not in five minutes- NOW! We want to be able to push a button on our fancy little cellphone/camera/music player/texting machine and get things instantly. This site can do that. Before this site the only relevant news sources that we could access in that fashion were national news, and the generic pop culture. Not all, but most youth today can give more information on Jessica Simpson’s dating life than they can on things that actually affect their local community. I would be willing to bet that youth in this town know more about Michael Jackson’s death than they know about the effects HST could have on them. I say this because before I started working in this industry, I knew more about pop culture than local news. But, it is not our fault.

Youth these days are getting their “news” information from different sources than the generations before them. Satellite Radio and iPods are taking away local radio listenership. Satellite radio now has over 18.5 million subscribers and iTunes has sold over 6 BILLION songs with over 75 million accounts linked to credit cards. Not to mention all the songs that have been illegally downloaded. The big satellite TV and digital cable companies are slowly eliminating the local programming in favor of the larger stations that are packed full of generic pop culture. This is giving local news less and less exposure.

The statistics on the internet are absolutely amazing. The internet is now used by over 1.6 Billion people world wide and reaches more adults than newspapers or magazines. Since these forms of technology have the ability to reach an international audience, they must report things that affect as many people as possible. It seems when they run out of international and national news they head to pop culture/celebrity controversies etc. I believe this is the reason many youth can spit out more information on Britney Spears’ last melt down than on Mayor Kerry Cooks’ last political appearance. Its not that we don’t care about local news, but pop culture has been much more accessible to us.

I hope this website is used to help educate my fellow peers through a medium we understand. We have a much greater chance at making educated contributions to the local community when we know more about local politics, local crime, local community events and other local news. This website is a great way for local news to keep up with pop culture in terms of accessibility. Now we just need to get youth more interested in local news and less interested in pop culture.

So to all the youth out there that read this article: