The "New Media" is a joke. It will never have and power and investigative abilities as the "old media".

The "New Media" is a bunch of internet nerds who have a inflated sense of worth when it comes to their medium. Where do these faanatastic blogs get their info from? The "Old Media". How do they get information overseas? The "Old media" based overseas.

Radio,TV and newspapers are still king.

On a General Note : I sick of people prattling on about the young generation being somehow more savy and intelligent then prvious generations(Generation Y). I have never seen such a group of ill-informed, consumeristic, narcasistic people before. They generally care about one thing, themselves. Country, Community and ideals don't matter.

Yes, Gen Y are typically self-obsessed, overly-protected, and oblivious to much of the world around them. But to say that country, community and ideals don't matter to them is a little harsh, if not downright wrong. For example, levels of volunteerism among young people are the same for other age groups in Australia. Studies report Gen Y'ers as generally showing high levels of respect for authority and older age groups -- particularly seniors (witness renewed young peoples' presence at Anzac Day ceremonies). I'm sick of people dismissing the creative potential of Gen Y. Despite their many "faults" (ie differences), they offer a fresh (different) way of looking at storytelling and the media. Prattling on about old and new media (a flimsy basis for argument by the way - a medium is a medium and they all have to be "new" at some point) is generally pointless.

There is a frightening lack of critical analysis in this piece.

The vast majority of stuff on YouTube is garbage, in anybody's language.

Kids "engaged in an animated discussion about mise en scene, character arcs and what sound level is required for the next shot" are, I humbly suggest, extremely few and far between. Even those that do exist in some isolated corners are... just kids, playing with some neat gear. To deduce that they are the "power in the media landscape" just because they fill the blogosphere with amateur videos is stretching our credulity more than somewhat.

The author's belated qualification - "[t]eachers have a responsibility here, to educate students to look critically at the materials they are consuming on [sic] daily" - is at least an admission that this is conspicuously absent at the moment.

There is also no connection made in the article between this essentially "playtime" activity and the future of mainstream media, only the assumption that such a connection exists. There seems also to be a tacit assumption that this will have some kind of impact on news media, as well as entertainment, a theme picked up by some of the previous comments.

The trendy stuff of today - YouTube, MySpace etc. - are, in my opinion, simply fads, and will quickly go out of fashion. And the reason will be that kids are quite discerning, and once the novelty wears off will notice the lack of quality and switch off.

"Studies report Gen Y'ers as generally showing high levels of respect for authority and older age groups -- particularly seniors (witness renewed young peoples' presence at Anzac Day ceremonies)."

Really? To be honest, I felt it's the opposite, respect for older people (or anybody teachers etc.) has gone down the toilet from my own daily experience. Then again that could be just Sydney.

Anzac day has turned into a carnival. Once upon a time it used to be a solemn day to remember the fallen. Now it's turned into a massive celebration complete with MacDonalds and other retailers trying to make money out of it.

People wave flags and go on about patriotism (I thought loud mouth patriotism was the refuge of Americans, unfortunately it has spread here. Anyway how does waving a flag make you patriotic?) and in recent years groups of yobbos run around forcing people to kiss the flag on the day.

It has become a day where we as a nation collectively pat ourselves on the back. Twats like Koshie and his braindead mates goto Kokoda and make the situation even more farical.

Although this isn't the fault of generation Y, I admit.

Pericles, we'll see, but I suspect the events of the next 20 years will give you cause to reconsider your opinion that YouTube and MySpace are passing fads. Google just bet $1 billion on the possibility that they are more than Dutch tulips. The cultural effect of an entire generation sharing experiences this way will most likely be profound (though how this will manifest specifically remains a question for the "futurologists", of which I am not one).

Bobalot, nice whinge about the state of the world. Now, if you think the world's stuffed, it certainly wasn't Gen Y who made it that way. They're just left to clean up the mess - so why exactly should they be nice to you?

Mercurius, $1.6 billion dollars (in Google shares, incidentally) means as much to Google in financial terms as a night at the theatre means to me. I couldn't afford to do it every day, but once in a while is ok.

As you say, time will tell. But just between you and me, I was consistently correct in my prognosis of the last dotcom rise and fall, and I suspect I will be about this too.

Eyeballs are fine, and that is what both Google and News Corp were buying. But monetizing those eyeballs is a completely different task.

Bear in mind that I am not saying that online communities and video-sharing will die out. But I am saying that they will cease to be leading-edge. When they become "just another function of the internet" the ability to make money from the vast numbers of users will cease.

Email is a classic example. Despite the fact that every man + dog has at least one email address, nobody is able to make money from it. Except spammers and Nigerian widows.