Thursday, February 17, 2005
OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan
The MSM is reacting negatively to bloggers because it has so internalized the credentialization that journalism degrees confer that it cannot see that credentializing, while certainly providing some basic tenets of a profession, is also an effective way to limit the supply of potential journalists.
This internalization leads to the mistaken assumption that only those who become accreditted can be a journalist. Nothing is further from the truth. Only those who actively seek out journalism positions take what the profession has determined to be the "best" path towards employment.
What is forgotten (or maybe never learned in the first place and therefore cannot be forgotten) is that the overwhelming majority of people do not take that path.
This does not mean they cannot do the job though, and here is the fundamental error is made. If only a small percentage of people chose to be journalists, I am comfortable when I say that there are as many who didn't who would be just as good at it as the currently-employed journalists.
The fact these take the form of "bloggers", an entirely new word and one with an onomatopoetic character makes it too difficult to break through that internalized veiw of the profession.
The MSM is reacting negatively to bloggers because it has so internalized the credentialization that journalism degrees confer that it cannot see that credentializing, while certainly providing some basic tenets of a profession, is also an effective way to limit the supply of potential journalists.
This internalization leads to the mistaken assumption that only those who become accreditted can be a journalist. Nothing is further from the truth. Only those who actively seek out journalism positions take what the profession has determined to be the "best" path towards employment.
What is forgotten (or maybe never learned in the first place and therefore cannot be forgotten) is that the overwhelming majority of people do not take that path.
This does not mean they cannot do the job though, and here is the fundamental error is made. If only a small percentage of people chose to be journalists, I am comfortable when I say that there are as many who didn't who would be just as good at it as the currently-employed journalists.
The fact these take the form of "bloggers", an entirely new word and one with an onomatopoetic character makes it too difficult to break through that internalized veiw of the profession.
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