Former Mountain View resident Jose Antonio Vargas returned home last week to tell a group of local entrepreneurs about how he used the social networking site Facebook to win a Pulitzer Prize.
The Internet, he said, has become “a tool of democracy,” and online resources are now essential forms of communication.
“We’re living at the dawn of a new time where with the click of a mouse, we can be isolated and connected at the same time,” Vargas said.
The talk, given during a luncheon last Wednesday in Palo Alto, was organized by the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce for its new program, Young Innovative Professional Entrepreneur, Etc., or YIPEE, which is a networking program designed for the region’s younger entrepreneurs.
During the shootings last spring, other reporters drove from Washington to the Virginia Tech campus, but Vargas found more information by simply going online. The resulting reports included some of the first eyewitness accounts of the tragedy.
Although printed newspapers are dying, Vargas said, young people are becoming more interested in the world they live in — but they’re using online resources to explore it, and to socialize with their peers.
“Everyone has decreed the newspaper dead, and what happened to the San Jose Mercury News and San Francisco Chronicle is devastating,” Vargas said with regards to major staffing cuts at those papers. However, he added, “The paper side may be nearing extinction, but the news side is still news.”
“Readers want more news, not less,” he said. “They care.”
Vargas noted that a larger online world can cater to different uses and personalities, and that it’s not much different than any other clique or social group.
