Page 3 of The Observer today was entirely given over to a story about the backlash against “the web’s endless cacophony”. Citing British-born Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur out at the end of the month, it argues that the rise of self-publishing is a direct threat to truth and discernment as administered by “experts”. It targets Wikipedia, MySpace and YouTube, among others, and has only a couple of sentences in defence by Jeff Jarvis. I thought it was an extraordinarily intemperate piece of unbalanced journalism, and even Keen was dismissive on his blog today. It sounds a bit like a wounded “old media” stalwart trying to make sense of a tidal wave of change, and failing.
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