It’s interesting to read Aaron Hanscom’s article about Spain on PJM this morning in conjunction with today’s New York Times editorial on Iraq (surprise: they want us to get out) and blog commentary on Andrew Keen’s new book The Cult of the Amateur.
I take it Keen’s book – which I am unlikely to have time to read in this life – blames the Internet for the decline of culture and a new rise in amateurism. Forget the obvious that many art forms – film, theater, the novel, fine art – were in serious decline long before the Internet, the idea is almost too simplistic to comment upon. Keen also evidently bemoans the assault on legitimate expertise by blogs. (Really? Hello, Eugene Volokh!)
The obvious truth is that blogs are no more nor less than a publishing platform. Just as on any platform, good things will appear while the vast majority will be mediocre. Keen may feel quality is threatened here, but I wonder. In the long run it may be the reverse. A simple comparison of Hanscom’s piece and the Times’ editorial immediately shows you how level the playing field has already become. Which is more interesting and which tells you more?
Speaking personally, as one of the, alas, older bloggers, I previously spent decades working for mainstream media from Universal Studios to The New York Times. I find my new blogging life just as interesting and in many ways more challenging. We are still at the beginning of changing times (I suppose we always are), so it is difficult to know where all this will go. The competition for eyeballs is ferocious – and only some of them (as in other media) will go to quality. It is, as William Congreve so aptly put it back when the theater meant something (1675) – The Way of the World.
When my wife and I watch a compelling movie, we are quiet and focused. When the movie is crud we start talking over it and soon shut it off.
This is called by some a decline of culture.
The media has been Al-Qaeda’s Fifth Column giving quislings like Mr. Elizabeth Edwards room to call the GWOT a “bumper sticker.” Meanwhile, the NYT is of more than one mind about this, with a good article by John Burns, who refuses to drink the Kool-Ade, on Anbar & rolling back AQ in the field.
But as for WHAM, the NYT is helping AQ here in the states & the Dems are heavily invested in an American defeat, so they can blame it on Chimpy McHitlerburton & his evil VP plus those nasty Repubs……
Too bad Talk Radio doesn’t really run the country, Trent-boy.
Finding quality is always hard work (and always was). The NY Times editorialists would like (us) to believe that the brand name ensures quality, but the hoi polloi have discovered that old brands do not retain quality without genuine competition. There’s a lot of crap amongst the blogs, and sometimes some bloggers are simply on a brief roll and then have little insight to instill. Well, at least they got to shoot their wads. We’re better off for that than feeling chained to the likes of MoDo & Co. At least with the internet working pays off. In the old days one might have to pretend that the Times actually was good (sort of like in Star Trek the Next Generation when Picard believed he could see 5 lights—at the risk of straining a simile).
Comparisons tend to wake people up. If the Times is going to stay in business, it will simply have to compete, although that might be a dirty word to some folks. Hectoring people who read blogs is not a particularly smart strategy, let alone accurate.
The old media does not represent some kind of eternal Platonic Form; it is itself a creation of the technologies of its day. For example, the daily newspaper as we know it resulted from a convergence of the high-speed printing press, the telegraph/teleprinter, the linotype/phototypesetter, and the wirephoto machine.
These people are really rather pathetic.
Nothing more nor less than a “publishing platform” hits the nail on the head. And as in all communications, one has to ferret out the quality stuff. But that it doesn’t exist, or the bar has been lowered is pure rubbish!
Never has there been such a feast of ideas and creative expresssion!
Save the planet – abandon Iraq.
Save Spain – abandon the United States.
Non experts are confounded.
It is a publishing platform, indeed!
As for the virtue or lack thereof in amateurs, I’ll have to read Keen’s book to see what he has to say (certainly the commentary linked is, well, amateurish).
But there are two points I’d like to make on the subject of amateurs:
1. The assumption that all bloggers are amateurs is ridiculous, as Roger notes. In the case of bloggers posting under pseudonyms, it is even more so, since several (pseudonimous) bloggers that I correspond with regularly are experts in their fields.
2. There are “amateurs” who have great expertise on their fields of interest, for instance, Eric Newby and Marjorie Shostak.
Just because a person is not certified by the Grey Lady as an “expert” doesn’t mean the person has no credibility.
Indeed, a case can be made that being called an expert or being in the NYT’s payroll as an expert is proof to the contrary.