JOLLY DAYS

Andrew Keen's High Quality

Andrew Keen wrote a book about bloggers. He thinks blogging is all junk and lacks, his favorite term, “high quality” (HQ). His examples of HQ are the New York Times and conveniently, the show on which he was appearing, promoting his book : Lehrer. (I keep hearing his “high quality” assertion as I think about Reuters early use of the word “martyr” for suicide murderers.) I wonder if he followed the New York Times' self-sliming under Howell Raines (although they have self-corrected to some extent under Bill Keller).

The fact that most “high quality” journalism venues themselves blog, or that all bloggers are not presenting junk, suggests that Keen is incapable of making distinctions. In fact, many HQ venues pull bloggers into their fold when the bloggers have achieved critical mass via popularity.

There is tremendous resentment on the part of journalists that their sole control of media channels is now complicated with many voices — often more popular and doing a better job at revealing on-the-ground facts, embarrassing mainstream media. The HQ journalists played the corporate media game, got their jobs, and now ask, why should someone without their bureaucratic skills have a larger audience?

Glenn Reynolds said something that made more sense to me: if bloggers are going to play the part of journalists their natural venue is the local. Newspapers and big media can't handle the details but bloggers can unearth through sheer persistence — a proximate cause of change. His interlocutor, Sean Carroll, said that right wing blogs tend to be more diffuse, more “pundit” focused, while left wing blogs are more activist and seek journalistic credibility.

What really needs some regulation on the net are the hate sites and grotesque violence that can be found with a simple search — as Clive James has pointed out. But how can you get rid of that? Keen thinks the web is pre-civilized but in fact it is post-civilized. Welcome to the logical consequence of post-modernism Andrew.