The headline of Mike Langberg’s column in today’s San Jose Mercury News says it all: ‘An Internet fed mostly by amateurs is frightening.’ He cites author-blogger Nicholas G. Carr, who doesn’t seem to understand Web 2.0 very well, and then goes off on a rant against the amateurization of the Web and the rise of collaborative media efforts like Wikipedia:
I’m very much on Carr’s side of the fence. I don’t want to read blogs by political extremists, listen to podcasts recorded by droning amateurs, or watch videos produced by talentless would-be directors — even though the Internet makes all that possible.
I want to get my news from highly skilled professionals, listen to music by the world’s most brilliant performers and composers, and be entertained by big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas.
Of course, I’m biased. I make my living writing this column, and my paycheck is threatened if everyone decides freely available blogs — even at lesser quality — are an acceptable substitute.
Carr concludes: “The layoffs we’ve recently seen at major newspapers may just be the beginning, and those layoffs should be cause not for self-satisfied snickering but for despair. Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can’t imagine anything more frightening.”
Amen.
For years, Mike’s former colleague, Dan Gillmor, and I have been saying that the emerging mediasphere is to be celebrated for the wealth and diversity of viewpoints and reportage that amateurs bring to the table. We’re always click to add that this does not herald the downfall or marginalization of mainstream media, but rather the elevation of a new media form.
This kind of us-against-them rhetoric only exacerbates the increasing irrelevance of like-minded voices in the mainstream media who are trying to hold back the tide.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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