Undercurrent

Judged by its title, Glenn Reynolds’ new book “An Army of Davids. How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths” puts all the usual pro-blogging, anti-media rhetoric to use. The book excerpt starts that way, with tales of small bloggers taking on the tremendous power of “Big Media” (Reynolds actually goes so far as to claim that media power hasn’t been countervailed by other institutions such as political parties, churches and labour unions since before the 2nd world war. Though researchers generally agree that media power has been on the rise in industrialized countries – see Norway – clearly debates about media power and the rise of blogging will be somewhat different when held in other regions).

But read on, and you will find that Reynolds’ argument isn’t one-sided after all. In fact, he can be interpreted in much the same way as recent statements by other “we media” champions like Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and Craigslist’s Craig Newmark: They don’t want to “defeat” media and journalism – they want better journalism, investigative stories, more reporting, community-building media. Here’s CNET indirectly quoting Newmark from a discussion between the two this week:

But where some in the blogosphere are increasingly calling for the death of the so-called mainstream media, he said, it is important to have professional writers and editors, since such work is difficult. Further, he said, it is important to have professionals willing to spend long days devoted to covering crucial stories. Still, he noted that the mainstream press has increasingly dropped the ball and that society suffers because of it. Thus, he said, the ideal situation would be for the mainstream press and citizen journalists to join forces.

Recently, Wales said something similar: “Asked if traditional media would be squeezed out by the proliferation of user-generated content, Mr Wales repeated that: “everybody makes jokes, but we still need professional comedians”.”

Reynolds arrives at a related conclusion after a tour of extraordinary examples of a new kind of journalism. The most surprising is Michael Yon. I, for one, have always thought that war reporting would be the ultimate border between amateur and professional journalists. Yon maybe proves otherwise, though of course he must acquire some of the same skills as war reporters to survive.

Reynolds’ prediction, then, sounds much like Newmark’s:

Over the coming decade, we’lll see the growth of alternatives to traditional Big Media, and-if we and Big Media are lucky-we’lll see the Big Media Goliath moving to ally itself with the Davids, rather than positioning itself against them. We’lve seen a few signs of that. After the Indian Ocean tsunami, and again after hurricanes like Katrina and Rita, we’lve seen newspapers and television stations incorporate citizen journalism into their coverage via blogs, chat boards, and other mechanisms. In a crisis, the value of having thousands of potential correspondents out there with computers, digital cameras, and other technology is obvious. But in fact, the value is there all the time. Noticing that may take them a bit longer, but I suspect that they will notice it in the end. Those who don’lt may wind up being replaced by those who do.

Opinion leaders for “we media” forming an informal movement for the improvement of big media? Why not. And pushing it further: Imagine that the whole bunch of media-critical bloggers (discovered a new one today) in fact are nothing else but a people’s movement for – better media.