Geeks vs. journalists: A tale of two worldviews

"The mainstream news industry dug itself this hole by not staying smart, humble, hungry and focused, and now it blames the geeks.

"Some of the incurious double-digit-IQ nonsense I've heard in the newsrooms of old-line mainstream publications would make the average geek bite a mousepad in half. Frankly, a lot of people with journalism degrees are the last people who ought to become journalists.

"The idea of journalism as a white-collar profession, rather than a grubby old trade, is only a few decades old. As the profession became a more attractive line of work to the children of the middle and upper classes (because like the song says, there's only so much you can do with a BA in English), its practitioners wanted to retain some shred of elevated class identity, as they would have if they'd gone into medicine or the law. The job of journalism became less a matter of scrap and skill and shoe leather and more about one's educational (and, to some extent, cultural) bona fides."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Digg, Dug, Buried: How Linux news disappears(Jun 26, 2009)
• Don't Cry For Disappearing Newspapers(May 01, 2009)
• Pulitzers, Broadcasters and Digital Denial(Apr 27, 2009)
• Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable(Mar 23, 2009)
• Fear and loathing in Holland(Mar 16, 2009)
• The Death of the Newspaper(Feb 06, 2009)
• Stupid penguin-baiting rant du jour(Jan 27, 2009)
• Careers In Linux Journalism-- No Knowledge Required!(Jan 21, 2009)
• Blogging = Freedom(Oct 23, 2008)
• Build Better Blogs With Linux(Oct 03, 2008)