Our first Bubbleborn is a 19-year-old journo student who just landed his first job, at a magazine where he'll publish his investigative series on the MySpace founders. Trent Lapinski is working on a story (due out in June) that compiles and confirms his earlier work examining the MySpace history that the major press isn't telling. As earlier reported, Trent says MySpace was founded by a spam company with shady insider-trading ethics. MySpace already threatened Trent with a defamation lawsuit, but they haven't followed it up with action — because, Trent tells me, they're too vulnerable to risk the press a suit would bring.

"I've already had some major breaks in the story," he says, "and I'm working to follow the money and conducting interviews with anyone I can get to talk. I've had some success and I believe when all is said and done a lot of people are going to have a very different opinion of MySpace."

And Trent has a grander vision than clearing the air about just one dot-com. After the jump, he indicts the Old Guard of yellow journalism and PR sycophancy.

I'm just working to restore what journalism was originally all about: bringing the truth to the people and being a watchdog against the government and corporations. Pretty much thanks to the 24 hours news channels, "news" as we know has declined in quality simply because they use emotion to get people to watch instead of actually doing any work in following what is going on... Meanwhile there is a considerable generation gap between today's Internet youth and the TV generation above us... The Internet generation is currently outnumbered, doesn't have much voting power, and has yet to really prove themselves in the business world, which subsequently prevents today's youth from getting positions in the media. But who better to investigate and tell the stories of today than those who grew up in a tech era?

The other considerable problem is PR. I've been running an Apple news website, AppleXnet.com, for 5 years now, and it's given me major insight into the technology world, and it's nothing but a press release machine. There is no news when it comes to technology because everything is a marketing stunt, ploy, or sales technique. I literally once had someone tell me that it is a journalist's duty to rehash PR into something concise, yet without it sounding like PR. Jack Campbell, he's a guy who ran a series of Apple accessories companyies and scams. My site broke several stories about him and his scams which ultimately lead to the company's bankruptcy. In an attempt to get us to stop looking into him, he decided to tell us what we should be doing instead, rehashing PR. It was laughable.

Earlier on Trent's work: Spammers and ex-cons, not Tom, made MySpace, says journalism student [Valleywag]

Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, the poster boys for MySpace, went the way of so many startup founders. Diluted out of the gig by their investors and the spam company running their operation, they fought — and lost — a battle to keep Intermix Media from selling to News Corp. at an undervalued rate. It's a far cry from the sycophantic "young guys done good" story trumped up for the press.

Both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times got it wrong. MySpace isn't the brainchild of DeWolfe or Anderson, this was a Wiederhorn job. DeWolfe and Anderson were mere cabin-boys. [...] The site was created by a multimillion dollar company (a spam company), then purchased by a multibillion dollar entertainment/news company (Fox, News Corp.). The site was not a garage project; MySpace was created and coded by people being paid considerable salaries sitting in an office building in Los Angeles.

Trent has a whole series of investigative MySpace pieces. The most trenchant:
The MySpace Report
Why Doesn't Anyone Ask Who Actually Runs MySpace?
Fox To Buy Intermix Media/MySpace: The Truth About MySpace

There goes the little charm MySpace had left. Major props to Trent for cutting through another cloud of corporate-spin bullshit.

The Truth About The Money and Founders Of MySpace.com [Trent Lapinski via WebProNews]