Feral Beast: contrarian's contrarian simply cancels himself out

Friday, August 10, 2007

contrarian's contrarian simply cancels himself out

Thumbs down on Andrew Keen's book, Cult of the amateur: How today's internet is killing our culture and destroying our economy. Why is this guy anti-blogging prof getting any attention? He's a throwback with far less savvy than most of the MSM (er, mainstream media, for those still baffled by blogging terms.)
Commentator Roy Greenslade quotes critic Jeff Jarvis, as someone who is not especially keen on this polemical book:

"Keen wants to be the contrarian's contrarian. But that only makes him a double negative. It makes him a curmudgeon, a conservative trying to hold on to the past, a mastadon growling against the warm wind of change."

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Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Retrospective : five decades of journalism as reported by CJR

Fake AP Stylebook reminds us: Unless you're doing a story on the Muppets, you are not a gonzo journalist.

"The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk." Poynter Institute, advocating a broader definition of who is a journalist.