Elle Segal

In the 2009 national comparison of popular news syndicates, The New York Times, the longtime grandaddy and de facto standard of journalistic expertise, was ranked below one of the newest and least popularized internet news providers. The Fontaine Index is a ranking of over 100 popular print, broadcast and internet based news providers. Qualities such as, investigative integrity, brand name recognition, "badass design staff", and "yellowest journalist" are analysed by a team of experts and then compiled into a ranked index by a sophisticated arbitrary ranking algorithm.

According to Rupert Mudoch, "the Fontaine Index is the industry's standard arbitrary comparison. Without it there would be no way for media executives to subjectivly justify charging such high premiums for advertising space."

The 2009 ranking placed an obscure, student run TV station at the top of the list. AggieTV, also known as AGTV, is a wholly student run "TV" station at the University of California, Davis. AggieTV was establised by a group of motivated students with a pasion for film and television production. To this day, UC Davis does not offer any official courses in broadcast journalism.

"We were very disapointed with the lack of educational opportunities in broadcast journalism here at UC Davis", explains one founding member. When asked how he felt about AggieTVs recent and unexpected rise to stardom, the founding member replied, "its encouraging to know that anything is possible when subjective qualifications are used to compile an arbitrary index. It gives us little guys some hope".

Daniel Fontaine, the executive producer for AggieTV was wary of the recent results. "I know there has been some concern within the television community regarding the efficacy of the measurement parameters used in the Fontaine Index. How am I to know whether or not the final index bares any meaningful relationship to the innitial survay data? But I guess in the end it does not really matter. As long as people think we are the best then we will be the best".

The Fontaine Index is in no way related to Daniel Fontaine, despite the name similarity.

The top 5 news sydicates for the 2009/2010 Fontaine Index where:

1. AggieTV

2. The New York Times, Time Warner Inc.

3. CNN, Turner Broadcasting

4. The BBC International

5. The Mailing List for www.cooks.com

Because the Fontaine Index is so widely used and respected, many advertisers choose it as their primary source for determining which network to buy advertising space from. The top spot is a lucrative position to have and The New York Times fall does not come without consequences.

Editor-in-chief of the Times, Bill Keller, worries that "layoffs may be necessary if our luck in the ranking process does not improve." Keller has mixed feelings about the Fontaine Index. "As long as we remain on top I'm accepting of its questionable methodology. Its days like today, however, that make me seriously question why this industry has accepted such a ludicrous ranking algorithm".

"For Christ's sake, who the hell as ever heard of AggieTV".