A Professional Journalist On "The Cult of the Amateur"

IMO one of the better assessments of the issues contained in Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur, by Howard Owens.

.

Part III: Andrew Keen and the Cult of the Amateur

My plea to professional journalists: Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, calls his blog “The Great Seduction,” but the real seduction here is the idea that UGC, amateur content, can and should be resisted, that somehow, if only professional news organizations would fight back — not use UGC, charge for content, create walled gardens, not go online — do something, anything that doesn’t involving soiling our mastheads with UGC — we can somehow beat back the hordes of Visigoths pounding on our gates.

That’s magical thinking.

I know there are editors and reporters out there who fear the changes in their midst and think if only we would hold a stronger line, we would could save newspapers.

But if you’re like me, and you believe that the reason you got into journalism in the first place was to help make society better, to help shine a light on truth, to serve communities and the afflicted, then I hope you’ll recognize that intransigence does nothing to help the cause.

As I argued in my first post, amateur content has always had its place in the world, and in my second post I asserted that we are part of evolving ecosystem that will get better for content producers and consumers over time.

In this post, my metaphor is a fast moving train, at full steam, with no brakes. We’re on it, baby, ain’t there ain’t no getting off. Jumping off is suicide, so we might as well figure out how to get along with all of the other passengers, some of whom we’re guaranteed not to like.

It’s adapt or die.

And by adapt, I mean, figure out how to play within the new rules, not by insisting the rest of riders follow our old rules – such as demanding that readers pay for our content or that we can be the only authoritative voice.

.

The full post is here ...

Powered by Qumana