Round up a posse and head ’em off at the pass.
David Brin has written about how we’re on the cusp of another age of amateurs: how coming advances in technology and information management (and coming variations on current technology and information management) will make it easier and cheaper and better for impassioned amateurs than detached professionals to do whatever it is you want to get done. And we’re seeing that already to be sure in fields such as music distribution, where the RIAA is busily trying to prevent impassioned amateurs from muscling in on their market. (Yes, that’s a heavily slanted and opinionated assessment of the situation. So sue me.)
More interesting, I think, at the moment, is what’s happening in the field of news and reporting and punditry. To put it bluntly: the amateur schmoes are cleaning the pros’ clocks.
We’ve seen the handwriting on the wall rendered loud and clear in the Trent Lott Imbroglio, and now we’re seeing a curious side effect in its aftermath, as various pros scratch their heads and ask each other, “Who was that masked man?” They’re trying to pin this scalp on one of the pros, moonlighting as the pseudonymous Atrios over at the Mighty Middle C, because the alternative is (as yet) unthinkable: that, as Mr. Capozzolla says in that Rittenhouse Review piece, “a man with a full-time job and career aside from his weblog—i.e., Atrios—has done so much to outshine the purported ‘professionals’ of our punditocracy.” —And as for the job the pros themselves are doing: well. The Daily Howler is as usual doing an incomparable job of showing just how far below the fold they’re falling, these days. (To name but one example.)
It’s hardly as simple as that (it never is); some of the amateurs are also pros and some of the pros are acting like amateurs and as far as the Affaire d’Lott goes, everyone who is in a position to know where it all began agrees that The Note kicked it all off with their squib on Thurmond’s birthday. But in an age that sees ethics burnished by a century or so of professional journalism rapidly brushed aside in the name of higher ratings and bigger market shares and headlines that don’t “impact” the bottom line, you’re going to have to depend more and more on the unpoliced, unwashed, unshackled schmoes to kick up the ruckuses that need kicking. (Rucki?) —Certainly, if anyone ends up claiming this scalp, I’m betting it’ll be some part-time “amateur” like Hesiod or Dwight Meredith, and not a member of our once-proud, ever-more-compromised Fourth Estate.
Commenting is closed for this article.
