The New York Times issues a set of standards for their in-house blogs. Included in the memo that was leaked to Gawker: “What should be avoided in all of them is any hint of racist, sexist or religious bias, or any suggestion of nasty, snide, sarcastic, or condescending tone – ‘snark.’ If something could easily fit in a satirical Web site for young adults, it probably shouldn’t go into the news pages of nytimes.com.”
We’ve been reading about how some 4chan character is dominating the Time 100 list as of late, but mostly we don’t understand it because 4chan scares us. The list, which features the hundreds of finalists of the “most influential people” as chosen by Time Mag allows you to rank each member on a sliding influence-meter, and while it’s a ton to get through, it’s…wait for it…nice to have an influence on ranking the most influential people. And the slidey thing is fun. For a few minutes. Currently atop the list is “Moot” or “moot” (you never know!), the 4chan founder, in what seems to be a Colbert-Nation-like rush of voters. But we’re not sure whether user votes have any sway for the final list.
Boing Boing got on the “This Is Why You’re Fat” bus like, a billion years later than everyone else — they’ve already landed a book deal for chrissakes!
More Time Magazine news: This time they called Arianna Huffington “The Web’s New Oracle.” So what does she have to say about our future? We’re going to be really, really poor. “Open the site on any given day and you will be greeted with copy from the Associated Press, contributions from unpaid writers, stories whose legwork was done by other news outlets and a smattering of entries from the site’s five reporters.”
And finally, we leave you with a real upper, courtesy of a segment from this morning’s Today Show: “Like many companies, wowOwow.com has a bunch of interns running around the office, working for free for the opportunity to learn about the business. What makes these interns different is that they aren’t fresh-faced kids who’ve never had a job. Instead, they’re all in their 40s and 50s and accomplished professionals.”