Okay, I admit it. Like many of my colleagues at work, I go onto Digg quite frequently—at least several times per week—to read news, occasionally get a good laugh, but generally to stay informed on the latest technological trends. But lately I feel as though Digg has started to loose its credibility as a reliable source for quality news and information. Just today I caught this story (image below) prominently ranked second in the day’s most popular news items.

My initial reaction: has the collective intelligence level of people decayed to the point where stories like these rank among most popular? Is this what people are reading, find interesting, and generally share with others online?

I’m a bit mystified because the premise of Digg—or so I thought—was a focus on quality content related to technology, science, culture, politics, and other prominent subject areas—subject areas I consider interesting and worthy of my time. But the online collective masses who dictate what ultimately ends up being most prominently displayed on Digg and other user-generated news aggregator sites apparently have other ideas on what’s most relevant.

More and more I find the emphasis on Digg has turned to absurd news and odd stories I would characterize as tabloidesque in nature and of the infotainment variety.

Perhaps I don’t fall into the target audience for Digg anymore and there’s a growing conspiracy to filter content only of interest to 14 year-old suburban boys and 60 year-old, bingo-playing grandmothers. I don’t know.

The irony here is that in the last couple of years we’ve been hearing a great deal from the news media establishment about how the Internet dumbs things down and undermines credible news reporting. But with the trivial variety of news items increasingly being posted on sites like Digg and Reddit, I seriously wonder if the news establishment has anything to worry about.