New Haven Independent

And that will be great, said Silva and Lugavere (right to left in photo), who co-founded the Emmy-winning “Current TV” Internet video-news citizen journalism channel with help from former Vice President Al Gore.

Their work also appears as a show on cable television, mostly in short segments. The website has a ton of content. Little of it, if any, is apparently edited before posting.

(Click here and here to sample.)

Silva and Lugavere spoke Thursday night on “Media Revolution: Putting The Media in the Hands of Citizen Journalists,” at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at at Yale.
Both dabbled in filmmaking while undergraduates at Yale. Now their Current TV claims some 60 million subscriber households.

Twenty years ago people with interesting or provocative ideas had no way to communicate them outside of a close circle of friends, they argued.

“Now, new technology is changing the way we communicate,” Silva said.

“The website appeared to democratize communication. We just jumped at the opportunity,” Lugavere said.

They specialized in brief documentaries, which have become easier to create thanks to improved cameras and software. User-generated content on Current TV is not rare, they said.

Nor does much of it go through the editorial process that the now disintegrating newspaper industry used to use to ensure accuracy, objectivity and fairness.

No one reads Silva’s or Lugavere’s comments before the duo airs them.

They seemed slightly puzzled when asked about the concept of an “editor.”

After their talk and warm reception, Silva and Lugavere agreed that hundreds, thousands or millions of groups with a message could follow the same route they did to spread information or misinformation. They’re the editors.

Rational, intelligent commentary will expose the extreme anti-choice, pro-gun, anti-immigration, crypto-fascist, radical, bomb-making, socially maladjusted and their webcasts, Silva and Lugavere said.

But with say, 20,000 Web TV shows to monitor, who could possibly view each one? Having thousands of channels is practically like having no channels at all.

Newspapers, which exert some control over their content, will not disappear, they said. But newsprint will go the way of vinyl records. You’ll get the paper of your choice — just electronically, on a Kindle, Sony or Nook type device, they said.

As newspapers wither so will news on Google, Yahoo, and other freeloaders, they agreed.

Silva and Lugavere pointed out that they are not attempting to produce a “news” show.

“We try to be like your most interesting Facebook friend, on TV,” Lugavere said. “We want to be like junior Bill Mahers,” Silva said.

Except that comedian/commentator Bill Maher attributes his information to newspapers, which is also where Google News plucks its items without paying the reporters who wrote them.

Open-source information (no attribution, qualification, or verification) will become more widespread, they said.

Oh, Brave new world, as Aldous Huxley said.

Or was it Shakespeare?

It’s only a fact. No matter. Ask my editor.