While the mainstream media were having lunch, members of the audience made other plans. They scattered and are still on the move, part of a massive migration. The dynamic driving it? It's all about you. Me. And all the various forms of the First Person Singular. Americans have decided the most important person in their lives is ... them, and our culture is now built upon that idea. It's the User-Generated Generation. For those times when the 900 digital options awaiting ...

At least 52 civilians have been killed in the past week amid escalating violence instigated by an authoritarian President who refuses to heed the will of his people. No, not in Libya, or Yemen, or Bahrain, but in the West African nation of Ivory Coast, which is struggling for media attention amid crises elsewhere. "Ivory Coast isn't considered strategically important enough on the global stage — it is not a Libya, so to speak," one ...

The Japanese tsunami swept the Libyan civil war out of the news, just as the violence in Libya swept the far more consequential Egyptian revolution out of the news before it. That's how we roll in the mainstream media. There is an incessant tide of undifferentiated cataclysms; we rush to the sound of the guns and the natural disasters, especially if there are pictures. But all bang-bang is not equal. There are times, as in the case of Libya, when gunfire obscures more ...

The wife of a Colorado father at the center of the "balloon boy" saga told authorities that the giant helium balloon was specifically created for a hoax to draw media attention, according to court documents released Friday. Mayumi Heene told Larimer County investigators that she and her husband, Richard Heene, knew that their 6-year-old son Falcon was hiding at their Fort Collins home the entire time, even as police and military scrambled to search for the boy, according to the ...

A 22-year-old woman whose claims that she was abused in a trailer in rural West Virginia in 2007 helped send six people to prison now says she made up the story, her lawyer said Wednesday. "She is recanting her entire story," attorney Byron Potts told reporters in Columbus, Ohio, about his client, Megan Williams, who moved there after the incident. "She says it did not happen. She fabricated it." He added, "She wanted to get back at her boyfriend. She ...

An old grain warehouse collapsed in southwest China on Saturday, killing 10 people and wounding nine, local media reported.

A man wearing an explosives-laden belt blew himself up during a conference between Shia and Sunni groups in southwestern Iran on Sunday, killing or wounding at least 60 people, local media said.

The young child known as the "balloon boy" appeared sickly on NBC's "Today" show Friday morning. With his eyes adrift, 6-year-old Falcon Heene leaned his tiny head against his father before he vomited -- right in front of the cameras. The saga of the boy believed to be floating inside a giant silver balloon adrift over Colorado captivated a world audience. And the media spotlight has stayed on him. After the boy was discovered safe and sound in his family's ...

As the "sextortion" plot involving David Letterman continues to unfold, chit-chat about sex and the workplace -- always a water-cooler favorite -- is getting extra play. That's good news for Nicole Williams, a career expert and author of the in-stores-next-week "Girl on Top: Your Guide to Turning Dating Rules into Career Success." The media storm surrounding Letterman, she says, is bringing to the forefront an issue that's as relevant and pervasive as ever. "Eight million Americans every year enter ...

The lower house of Argentina's Congress has approved a controversial media law that spells out media ownership rules and calls for the creation of a regulatory agency. The measure passed Thursday by a vote of 147 to 4, but the wide margin does not reflect the heated debate over it. Lawmakers opposed to the measure protested by walking out of the chamber and not voting. Some even threatened to turn to the courts to challenge the legitimacy of the vote. ...