Whew! Happy New Year, everyone, and an editorial by my cyberpal, Larry Sanger...

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I'm happy that things seem to be fairly smooth so far. There are all kinds of things cropping up, but they seem to be quite minor at this point. Monday morning may or may not be very different. At least the infrastructure will be around for all that fix-on-failuer work that is likely to occur! The worst of my fears did not come to be, still, the likeliest of my fears have yet to be addressed.

Here is what Larry has to say (and, have a great weekend!):

Happy New Year!

Editorial by Larry Sanger

And a happy new year it is, so far.

I am writing this editorial with two quite different purposes in mind. The first is to express my extreme (but qualified) relief at the lack of serious widespread infrastructure problems as points east have rolled over to the new year, and to reflect on the significance of the lack of serious problems (so far). The second purpose is to explain and promote the editorial philosophy behind Sanger and Shannon's Review.

A short note of thanks before I begin, however. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Patrick Shannon for keeping the Review going since last April, and for tolerating and in many cases making use of my (rather sparse) editorial suggestions. I'm very glad that he has largely followed the editorial policy that I started, without any persuasion from me. But since mid-April the work on the website has been almost entirely his, and I think he has done a good job. He is also doing a great job summarizing the important stories today.

I. The news today.

As of this writing (December 31, 1999, just before midnight Eastern Standard Time), there have been few reported Y2K-caused problems with electricity, water, telephones, banking, and other basic services in the countries that have rolled into the new millennium. I even called a good friend (about whom I was very worried) in the medium-sized Russian city of Ishevsk, and am happy to report that telephones and power are operating normally there.

I'm happy: it has been wonderful to find that the worst-case scenarios (in which, at the stroke of midnight, nuclear power plants explode, electricity fails, water is shut off, sewage is untreated, etc.) will almost certainly not come to pass. This means, I think, that the chances of serious longer-term problems are at least somewhat lower than we may have estimated. It does not mean, however, that we will certainly or even probably have no Y2K problems of any significance in the months to come. That remains to be seen; we still have a way to go still. But with more good fortune, we will get through other event horizons (most notably, this Monday, January 3) without many significant problems. Then we will be able to put our worries about Y2K behind us and get on with our lives. That's a prospect to which I and I daresay most everyone greatly look forward.

For a few hardcore doomsayers, reports of rather few problems may be disappointing. On the other hand I can honestly say I'm not disappointed in the least. Our decadent civilization may need lessons in morality (as I explained in an editorial that I still stand by), but hopefully if the lessons comes they will be gentler than would have been provided by the doomsayers' disaster scenarios.

For the more hardcore pollyannas (by which I mean not people who were merely apathetic about Y2K but people who definitely believed and argued there would be no major problems), the news must be extremely gratifying. Their confidence still strikes me as having been foolhardy, but that will not stop me from offering hearty congratulations to them for making the correct prediction about the big rollover night. Well done.

The party's not over and in fact, as I write this, it hasn't even begun in the U.S. Best of luck to everyone in the coming year.

II. On the Review's editorial policy.

Now I'm going to switch gears and wax eloquent about what the Review's editorial policy has been for the last sixteen months, and wind up with a proposal for those who approve of this policy. To be honest, this is of relevance at present only because the present function of the Review may be winding down in the next few days or weeks (especially if Patrick runs out of funding), and I want to write to you while I still have your attention.

I believe a great many Americans, particularly conservatives and libertarians, are persuaded that a general left-leaning bias exists in most media sources. There are only a few exceptions, such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, CBN News, and some websites; but almost all of these have a pronounced conservative bias. In general, journalists in the last few decades have evidently come to the view that there is nothing particularly wrong with writing, placing, and dwelling on a news story in such a way as to promote a certain (controversial) attitude toward the reported news or some issues it illustrates.

This editorial policy has given mainstream American news the now-familiar flavor of propaganda, and I for one am sick of it. Those of us who simply want the facts, about which we can make up our own minds, deserve better, and with the Internet we should be getting something better, sooner rather than later.

As the Review developed in its early months it became clear to me that one of its best features was the fact that it was largely unbiased, and it became more so as time wore on. It is worth explaining what I mean by "unbiased," because no doubt there will be some cynics who claim that unbiased reporting is impossible; these cynics labor under a mistaken view about what lack of bias would be like. The concept of lack of bias is actually fairly simple: one identifies, in advance, which issues are matters of significant disagreement (e.g., abortion, gun control, welfare, or indeed Y2K); one then makes it a policy not to write, position, or follow-up stories in such a fashion as to promote any one view on those issues over any other.

This is difficult, no doubt, and perhaps a perfect lack of bias in this sense is impossible. But one can surely do much better in this regard than the likes of CBS News and The Washington Post.

News that lacks bias need not be impersonal and boring, as I think Patrick's writing in particular in the past few months illustrates. You may even know that he has certain strong views on some subjects; but usually he rather admirably has kept his views to himself. And though he simply presents the news largely without comment, his genial self shines through.

There have been two other factors that, together with the attempt to avoid bias while retaining our personal identities, have rendered the Review's approach to the news virtually unique.

First, ideally, the Review is made up of summaries of news articles (at least when we aren't, for one reason or another, simply cutting and pasting quotes from a news story). Our long-standing policy has been not merely to link to articles, or quote the first line or two of the articles. We have read through each story, found the most important points (which do not always occur in the first few paragraphs), and restated them succinctly. This requires judgment and a lot of hard work.

Second, we have tried to be exhaustive in our coverage of the important Y2K stories. We could not, for reasons of space and energy, include links to everything. What we did was to make well-informed selections from among virtually every news service online. This takes considerable energy and I from my own experience can empathize with Patrick when he tells me that he is exhausted.

You may be wondering why I've taken the trouble to lay all this out for you (other than to toot our horn a little). The reason is that I want to ask, publicly, that someone take this approach to the news in general, and not just Y2K. I imagine there would be a huge demand for a website that offered an unbiased, exhaustive, and good-humored summary of the news. Moreover, despite the fact that the Review has been essentially a one-man show all its existence and has had virtually no advertising budget or promotional team, it has become one of the most popular and respected Y2K news websites online. I can only imagine what would happen if someone were to take our approach to the news in general and had significant financial backing to promote it properly.

Please take this idea with my compliments. But why don't I transform sangersreview.com into that website? Among other reasons, I am a philosopher, not a journalist. I've finished my dissertation (except for final revisions) and should have my Ph.D. soon. I am enjoying the free time that teaching Irish fiddle gives me (and that work is great, too). But in fact a businessman approached Patrick and I recently with the proposal to find investors and transform the website into a leading news website. Ultimately we declined because we both knew that the project, particularly with its business management details, would consume all of our time and we both have other goals. I might agree, however, to help guide the editorial direction of a news website on a more limited basis. (If that website were at sangersreview.com, I'd be gratified, but it needn't be.)

The Internet is one of humanity's best expressions of the great notion of the marketplace of ideas. I trust that, in time, if indeed there is the sort of demand for the Review's approach that I believe there is, a website taking its approach to the news in general will appear. I look forward to making such a website my main source of news.

In the meantime, you can look forward to Sanger and Shannon's Review of Y2K News Reports continuing for a few more days at the very least.

) 2000 Larry Sanger



-- (pshannon@sangersreview.com), January 01, 2000

Answers

Thanks guys for all the hard work you've both put into keeping us informed, and for helping make the rollover smooth.

-- Dean -- from (almost) DuhMoyn (dtmiller@midiowa.net), January 01, 2000.

I don't know what I will do w/o my Shannon/Sanger review. The idea of a news format like the review is wonderful.

-- Loire (Wolfscout77@hotmail.com), January 01, 2000.

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