Five years ago, Dave Winer made a “long bet” with New York Times executive Martin Nisenholtz: “In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times’ Web site.”
Five years later, Rogers Cadenhead has done the math and concludes that blogs are edging out the Times (but that other mainstream media outlets are beating both of them — thanks to the NYT having squandered the golden years of cheap googlejuice acquisition by erecting a registration and paywall on their content, causing them to fall behind less well-known, but more readily linked news-sources).
Most interesting of all is that Wikipedia (only a year old in 2002) is clobbering both of them — more proof that the future is weirder than we can know. In 2002, it seemed like the two choices were “amateurs you trust” or “unbiased, accurate, and coherent” information from an “authoritative source.” In reality, the third, unforeseen choice was “a horde of nameless, faceless amateurs who are not required to prove expertise in the subjects they cover.”
Whenever someone asks you which of two futures you think is more likely, your best bet is always “none of the above.”
(via Kottke)