On February 1st, 2009, Google's search security program was subject to a somewhat unusual glitch. The data file that tells the search engine what sites are known to bad was mistakenly told to include any site with the forward slash character. Now, anybody who has surfed for more than ten seconds will tell you that that includes ... well, all of them! As a result, any user searching for anything at all was told by the search giant that "This site may be harmful to your computer", even if the site they were looking for was Google itself! The bug lasted for about an hour, and was certainly not the worst thing that has ever happened, and yet the web rather predictably went into mild chaos over it. Blogs were posted immediately, screenshots were taken and uploaded to flickr, and twitters were all of a-twitter. It was dugg, StumbledUpon, Facebooked, and all manner of other increasingly surreal Web 2.0 standards were instantaneously applied to it. A genuine 'Internet News story', especially when one considers Google's standing online. Some 70% of all web searches are conducted through it, and so prevalent is the search engine that its' name is now a recognised verb. One 'googles' rather than 'searches' these days.

Had the story ended here, nothing would be too unusual. However, this was apparently a big enough deal for Monday's edition of The Guardian newspaper to run it as a story. And not just them. The Daily Mail, purveyor of all forms of internet hatred decided to report it as well, and even train commuters were treated to the spectacle in their free daily The Metro. What turned out to be a short-lived blip for Google and ultimately a non-event was considered important enough to hit meatspace news.

This happened in the same week that The Daily Mail decided to expose the "shocking exploits" of teenage girls on the internet, focussing on Facebook in particular. It should come as no surprise to anybody that Facebooks' incredible success has also led to a level of fame outside of the World Wide Web itself, where even the most avid of Luddites will have heard of it.

That the internet is being discussed in both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers is interesting. That the discussion is mostly veered to portraying it in a negative light is not at all unexpected. Mostly for the simple reason that it is unquestionably in the interest of said dailies to discredit this new "pressless print" medium. Sales of daily newspapers are continuing to fall, as more and more people choose to get the news on their laptop than from their corner shop.

The internet is impacting upon the whole of society, for better or for worse. There are of course dangers online, as there are in the 'real' world. But, is it the place of traditional media to discuss these occurrences? Surely there is an inherent conflict of interests?

Recently, The Metro ran another article. It was one of the more unusual pieces of print journalism to run in recent memory. It concerned the actions of the website 4chan, and a YouTube user known as Boxxy.

4chan is a website that encourages its' users to post anonymously, and embraces all the anarchy that this will inevitably lead to. Often it amounts to nothing more than a bunch of teenage boys deciding to all post comments on an online article in order to upset or offend the creator. At other times they share and create in-jokes or 'memes' for the purpose of making each other laugh. Collectively, this trolling and raiding are known as 'lulz', and they are the raison d’être for 'anonymous', which is how the users of such sites refer to themselves. So, when one of these unknown posters came across the videos of a self-confessed attention seeking ADD-riddled teenage girl, he posted it on the site with the intent of making them laugh.

Things went quite wrong, and before long anonymous were at loggerheads. Some loved her, some hated her, and some wanted her destroyed! Eventually, some users decided to take things into their own hands and tried to bring the website down in order to stop people posting about her. Things actually got quite ugly, especially for Boxxy herself.

Had somebody blogged all this, or StumbledUpon it, then this would be par for the course. However, commuters on their morning journey the next Monday got to read all about it, too. An incident in a far-flung corner of the internet, of the kind that many well-versed netizens choose to steer clear of, was deemed worthy of headline news in a nationally circulated daily newspaper. Morning commuters, who had been blissfully unaware of the strife until that point, must have been immensely confused to find themselves reading about things they almost certainly had no interest in at all. They were warned that "Boxxy may well ruin the internet as we know it."

Was this really worthy of mention, let alone an article of its' own?

Later, The Guardian joined in, once again justifying this as somehow newsworthy. Although, to be fair to The Guardian, it was only discussed in the online blog, not the newspaper itself. However, the name Guardian alone lends The Metro piece some credibility, as if one of the respected big boys can talk about it, then surely The Metro can too?

Questions have to be asked. Not just about the actual newsworthiness of the story, but also of the motivations behind the printing of it in the first place. Nothing of benefit to anybody on the trains of Britain was learned that day. Every single person reading the story simply did not need to know about it. This was not a case of warning people that this could happen to you, as the focus of the story was of an online community tearing itself apart. The article did not even attempt to ascertain if Boxxy herself was ok afterwards! It is an article that appears to have been written purely to advertise the website it is talking about.

As print media continues to decline, and new media continues to evolve, can we expect to see more synergy of this kind? Will articles in the newspaper end with an ellipsis and the legend "Read more on our website" emblazoned at the bottom. Will websites require you to buy the newspaper to sign up, as a new form of captcha anti-bot check? Will anonymous declare war on The Metro?

It all remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain. When the Web pervades non-digital life to this degree, it is time we all started studying it a lot more seriously.