The Cult of "Professional" Complaining!

Aug 4, ’07 7:17 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer Categories Comments

I am a little surprised to read Dennis post on “The cult of the Amateur” – I have seen an interview with the author Andrew Keen on CNN.

Andrew is making the point that we bloggers and internet people destroy the “professional” journalists work and with that cause great harm to the economy. Having read the book – BTW if anyone wants it, I’ll send it to you for free, as I have no need for this drivel in my book-shelf – Andrew makes not one argument that could not be leveled at the “professional” media itself, in one way or another.

The truth is that the media has failed us, the general population for decades – Iraq war, health care, 45-minutes claim, to name but a few – the population has been lied to either because of incompetence or intentionally. But these lies could stand because our professionally trained media members let the politicians get away with it, with the result that we amateurs have to live with the consequences.

If there is a vacuum – it will be filled.

We generally blog about things we do understand something about, do we get things wrong(?) – hell YES. But then we have not been “professionally” trained and do not go out there and tell people we have all the truth and answers ( sorry, could not resist). Andrew offers no evidence that his so called “professionals” do any better job overall then the so called “amateurs”. What about the tabloids in the UK or Fox News in the US?

I think in the age of communities these “professional” are going to be replaced by these communities. The traditional media has told us for over 80 years what we should see, hear and read about – that time is clearly over.

I’m sure Dennis will know that Andrews arguments are so flawed on so many levels that the best thing to do is either write a book about it or move on. I have posted about this before and the “professionals” will just have to live with change, sorry.

Moving on……

Update 06.08.2007: Andrew Keen’s book is gone.

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