Cult of the Ameteur

Sail

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What do you think of this guy?

HMTKSteve

I think he is the mouthpiece for old media that has not figured out a way to make it in the new world. We had the same type of people installing buggy whips on early automobiles.

Vhdblood

Stephen Colbert is so awesome. He never ceases to make me laugh. Anyway, I think this guy is an idiot. He's just looking at the bad things on the internet, but he fails to see or recognize the good things.

Sail

This is the equation he seems to be making.

"Old media" is to "rich" and "exciting" culture, as "New media" is to "shallow" and "boring" culture.

spiritfiend

This guy is totally correct. People do their best work because they are being paid, not because they are passionate about it.

Either that, or the exact opposite...

I think Colbert came a little out of character in that interview.

Sail

I think Colbert came a little out of character in that interview.

I got that impression, too.

Jason

His entire argument is that art and culture are only truly art and culture if they are commercial. He's apparently never heard of "l'art pour l'art."

He's also making an equivocal -- and false -- argument that asserts that providing poor information on current events is directly comparable to providing non-professional art. While I admit that professional journalists and professional artists both require years of training, one is objective and the other subjective. There can be an easily measured difference between professional and amateur journalism, whereas it may be much more difficult to show a measurable difference between professional and amateur art.

HMTKSteve

I think another thing he is getting wrong is that he is comparing bloggers to the writers who work at the newspaper (no offense Jason) not the people who go out and get the news. We will always need people who go out and get the hard news in the dangerous places in the world.

Comparing two types of people who do the same thing "rewrite the news gathered by others" and saying that the guy who gets a paycheck from a media company is somehow better than the guy who "does it for free" is just wrong. Besides, just because no one pays bloggers does not mean they do not earn money from advertising.

Granted there are some very poor bloggers out there who can not string two words together to save their lives. There are also people in the "paid media" who are just as bad or try to push their agenda by way of their place in the media.

One more thing. Bloggers are not trying to replace hard news. Bloggers are trying to replace the Larry Kings and O'Reillys of the world. They are offering opinion pieces. All the real hard work is done on the local media outlets it's the big guys that are tarnishing news by cramming so many opinion shows on the airwaves that it makes it appear that news is all about opinion and not facts.