Web content goes mainstream

We see increasing examples of the mainstream media taking content from non-mainstream areas of the web. The Mirror (a UK national newspaper) had a front-page headline (6th January 2003) which used little oil company logos in a faked George Bush speech:

"I (Shell) not (Exxon)erate Saddam Hussein from blame. I will (Mobil)ise our troops... (etc)"

We'd stumbled across the same thing on the web a week before. In The Guardian (same day, 6/1/03) we read a column which seemed (in part) much like the anti-work rants you see on the web: "Most work is tedious", "Work is rarely ever fun, and it is less so today than ever", "Work is bulking too large in too many lives" etc. (This trend was well-established by 2006 – I even had my own Guardian column, Office Anarchist, satirising wage slavery in the office).

Newspapers such as the Guardian regularly print content lifted straight from internet blogs, and the dividing line between mainstream and non-mainstream media websites seems non-existent.