Kids, the Internet, and a future of Multi-Media Glitz

"When I first opened KidNews to public view on my university server in February, 1995, the World Wide Web was a relatively new phenomenon mostly known only to academics, computer junkies, government officials, and forward-thinking business people. Within a year, KidNews grew to the point that it was attracting nearly as many hits as our entire university server. It was taking up too much band width and not enough people could get in, plus there were enough shutdowns and server problems so that I decided to move to a commercial site. I decided I would try to sell sponsorships, and try to run KidNews like a real newspaper hoping that it would at least pay for itself. . . .

One of the seeming virtues of the Internet is that it has made publishing an almost purely democratic activity. For very little money, just about everyone and anyone with a little computer know-how could open their own Web site and begin a publishing fiefdom. Being able to speak to the world has always been the favored privilege of the wealthy and powerful, but the Internet changed that . . . at least for a time. But gradually this pure democracy is receding under the volume of its own mass, and the power of money and privilege is threatening to engulf the Web. KidNews is illustrative. Beginning as a one-person publishing venue by a teacher (myself) and a bunch of kids around the world, KidNews grew rapidly in relatively uncrowded field. Before long schools began publishing their own work, even though KidNews offered to do it for them. Other kids' sites sprang up by the dozen, but the biggest change was the emergence of corporate kids' sites by Disney, toy companies, cereal and kids' food manufacturers, publishers, software companies, and Internet entrepreneurs. Armed with games and promotions that gathered information and lists of product buyers, many of these sites aggressively pursued buyers rather than provided genuine services, and nearly all of them entered the field as low-maintenance sites, taking a great deal more than they gave back." --  from Kids, the Internet, and a future of Multi-Media Glitz, Peter Owens

"Peter Owens is a journalist, writer, software designer, and Web developer visiting Nottingham Trent University from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where he is a professor in the Professional Writing MA Program. He is the editor and publisher of KidNews, an on-line magazine that has published writing by over 5000 children around the world. He has designed several nationally award-winning software programs for the teaching of writing, has published hundreds of news stories and features for American newspapers and magazines, and placed fiction in various U.S. literary magazines. He earned his doctorate and masters degrees at Harvard University and several years ago was selected 'teacher of the year' at his UMass Dartmouth campus." -- from frAme, Issue 1, 1999