Behind the Headlines

While at home the other day, I wanted to retrieve a fact from an article I had written for The Evening News several months ago. Since I didn’t have direct access to the Evening News’ electronic archives, I resorted to a trick I tried a few years ago – I Googled myself.

I typed in my name on the Google search engine and hoped the bylined article would pop up. It did, along with a bunch of other links that reminded me of how pervasive the Internet is.

Though there’s been a lot of industry talk about the future role of newspapers recently, I think what’s sometimes overlooked in the discussion is that the insatiable desire for information that will almost guarantee that chroniclers of events and data will always have a role in society. Indeed, I was stunned at the “global” exposure the information in The Evening News gets.

It also made me a bit nervous.

Included in the search “hits” I found were articles written years ago that were captured electronically and posted on various special interest Web sites. There were articles from the 2004 election posted on a Green Party site, an article reprinted in a Vietnamese newspaper, and even photos of me taken during an address to the Michigan Chapter of the American Nuclear Society (I didn’t even realize someone had been taking pictures at that gig).

These were all “electronic clippings” so to speak, kept in all manner of electronic “scrapbooks” — items of interest pixilated and preserved, not unlike the yellowed clippings of yesteryear you might find pressed in any heirloom family album.