Is the Internet Democratizing Journalism?

Quote of the day:
“’It was 20 years ago today,’ the Beatles sang 40 years ago today.”
--Mark Steyn

Andrew Keen is causing quite a ruckus. He’s the guy who wrote “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture.”

Even though his book immediately annoys me because its title contains a colon, he has some interesting ideas.

The common wisdom these days is that the internet is transformative and salvational. The only discussion appears to be about how salvational it is, and how the transformation might play out.

One point that is chanted by those who parrot each other rather than actually asking questions and thinking for themselves is that the internet is democratizing the flow of opinions and culture.

Keen is quick to say that he is not a Luddite, but that he is concerned that the inferior work of legions of internet amateurs is displacing professional journalists and creative people.

He echoes the founders of our government when he talks about democracy on the internet:

“Pure democracy doesn’t work. It results in chaos and the development of new elites. And the problem with the internet is that the new elites are anonymous. So you have this rise of what I would call an anonymous oligarchy on the internet.”

He also points out research done at the Yahoo Research Center that shows that when a site is “reliably authored by people where everybody knows who they are... the quality of the content is significantly higher.”

It reminds me of the exasperating moment years ago when someone on a clergy e-mail list was criticizing something I had written, and he wouldn’t say who he was.

As Keen says, “why would we go online to be insulted? Why would we go online and listen to crazy people scream at each other and not even know who they are?”