The hanging of Saddam Hussein quickly went from weekend surprise to Internet phenomenon.

Newscasters broke into holiday programming Friday night (EST) to solemnly report the former Iraqi president had been executed for ordering the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims after an assassination attempt against him in 1982. At first they presented the story without images, then they had video — first shown on Arab television — of the moments leading up to the act.

Later, a grainy and shaky cell-phone recording of the event found its way online and the video bloggers took it from there. Thousands of people posted the grim event, many in its raw form. Others added their own commentary through titles, music and editing additional images into the original.

There were also some attempts at satire and social criticism with original works reminiscent of the videos made popular by the JibJab Web site. JibJab's 2004 election spoofs, "This Land" and "Good to Be in DC!", were viewed over 80 million times, according to their Web site.

While media critics and Wall Street analysts have been chronicling the decline of newspapers and TV news providers are scrambling to increase ratings, this new form of news sharing, of course, has been thriving.

Whether or not you're tracking the viral explosion on a nightly basis, when big news breaks, you can't miss it.

Stephanie Blake, an adjunct professor of mass communications at the University of Denver, sees the way news is disseminated and discussed shifting rapidly toward increased interactivity.

"I don't know that I necessarily agree that print and broadcast media will ever completely die out but I do think it's changing and adapting and one of the key places we see it being changed and adapted is through the computer and through the Internet," she says.

"And basically I think it gives people a large degree of control that they did not previously have. It almost seems as if particularly YouTube serves as sort of an interactive editorial page in today's world."

But is the unfettered, unedited regurgitation of news a good thing? asap asked Blake to talk about the subject. Here's some of what she said.

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NEWS BY THE MASSES

"I think that individuals can take a news event that's covered in the mainstream press — obviously in the case of the Saddam Hussein hanging it's been largely covered — but what they can then do is infuse their own cultural, political and moral narrative about society into the videos that they post online. So in a way it becomes a virtual public sphere in today's world."

"But something I think that's interesting in this virtual public sphere is that it's largely anonymous. You really have no idea what their background is, where they're coming from, what their motives might be for posting the videos. That adds another layer to the media that we didn't have."

"I think people take an event that has such a visual appeal — it involves death, it involves all the things that make for a good story — and then they take it and what they are really talking about are larger issues in society."

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THE CREATIVE VIDEO BLOGGER

"The reason that the Internet has been able to take off and why YouTube is so appealing to people is because it's such a rich form of media. You can use music. You can use print. You can art, photographs, sound, and that is I think what draws people into YouTube in general and into specific videos that are made about news events."

"Some people say that this is a new form of art and other people would say it's political commentary and not necessarily art. Do I think it's going to replace things like documentaries and things like art installations? No. But I do think it's kind of like the high-tech version, and I think it's immediate."

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ACCESS IS EVERYTHING. OR IS IT?

"If you have high-speed Internet you just sit down and it's on your screen in a minute and you can watch it 65 times if you want, and you can analyze it and write a comment about it. So that's a pretty cool thing about it. And again there's the flip side where it can run out of control where nothing is sacred, nothing's untouchable, nothing is safe from commentary or exploitation."

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TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?

"When the Internet first came out it was this idea of, oh, it's this place for democracy to flourish, everyone can have a voice and everyone can get out there and be part of the conversation and that's the definite benefit to it. But the other downside to it is — well, there are several — one is that it makes for more noise. There are more opinions out there, more to read through. Just because you post a video it doesn't mean it will be seen. Whereas if you put something on the 7 o'clock newscast you're likely to get a pretty broad audience. So I think people's voices can get lost as well."

"And also I think this idea of anonymity is a little bit dangerous, too, in that people can say pretty much anything they want to say online."

"I do think there is a danger of this running out of control. There's not as much self-censorship as you get with newspapers or broadcast journalism. If you're looking at a newspaper they're a corporate entity. They have rules and ethics that they abide by but online, because we live in a democracy and we have the First Amendment, it is a free for all."

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Howie Rumberg is an asap reporter based in New York.

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