Camille Paglia SITE SEEING
www.nytimes.com
The Internet has changed my whole approach to print media. I find it a much more efficient and democratic way to monitor the press. I now have a lot less patience for papers piling up all over my floor.
I don’t read The New York Times in its print version anymore. I access what I want from it online. The Internet has broken the hold that The New York Times and The Washington Post had over the media in the United States until the 1990s. A wider range of voices are now being heard online and the prestige of the elitist North East media pack has suffered. That is a very positive thing.
I have been deeply involved with the Internet from the beginning. I consider myself the first Internet intellectual. I love the speed of the Internet and the capacity it gives me to break news. When Princess Diana died, all the US papers had gone to bed. On the Internet we were able to comment directly. For an entire day there was nothing but us out there. It was quite exhilarating.
People moan and lament and say that modern technology is the end of culture. I think that’s a mistake. The Internet is not the end of culture, it’s something new that we don’t yet fully understand.
Camille Paglia is professor of humanities at Philadelphia University. She writes a weekly column for the online zine