This is a good story, as far as it goes, in the Los Angeles Times on how the mainstream media is altering its news coverage to meet the edicts of Internet popularity. I would take it a step further: social networking sites, Digg, and other Internet phenomena represent a sort of mob rule mentality, where mere popularity is equated with importance, relevance, and truth. The fact that the mainstream media is following along shoud be surprising to noone.

Another example of this is Twitter, where one judges oneself based on how many "friends" are watching the most often boring and trivial aspects of one's life. It doesn't matter who those friends are, or how inane the messages might be; just the fact that hundreds or thousands of people are listening is the exclusive measure. I struggle (but not really) to understand how someone can measure oneself based on such an anti-value.