Modul Mata Kuliah Journalisme Online - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

As turnabout is fair play, I'll respond by saying that the book is filled with similar amateur attempts __
unwarranted assumptions followed by something like a list that assumes completion but that is, really, a
selection devised to make the whole appear to be something other than it actually is. As if we wouldn't
notice.
Sure, YouTube contains all the things. So? No one watches them unless they involve their friends -- or
show unusual talent of some sort. What draws people to YouTube is not the sort of item Keen lists at all.
Not that Keen cares. He's not talking to people who know what YouTube really is, but to those who want
another reason to bemoan contemporary society. He's like the amateur magician people applaud
because they want to believe he's good __ not because he is.
Like the worst sort of amateur, Keen abuses information. He writes, "The New York Times reports that
50 percent of all bloggers blog for the sole purpose of reporting and sharing experiences about their
personal lives'.(7) He doesn't provide a reference, but he is likely referring to an article by Felicia Lee
published on July 20, 2006 entitled "Survey of the Blogosphere Finds 12 Million Voices". The conclusion
Keen draws, which does not even adequately reflect the survey the story is about, begs the question:
What about the other 50 percent? Indeed. And the only response possible to Keen is a re-phrasing of
Sturgeon's Law, making it, "So what if 50 percent of the blogs is crud? 50 percent of everything is crud."
By comparison to the original, which was about science fiction with the percentage being 90, I'd say the
blogs must be doing quite well, indeed!
For all his association with Silicon Valley, Keen does not understand what is going on over the Web at all.
One could even accuse him of being "ilneterate." Steeped in the older "literacy" culture, he cannot see
that "neterate" culture doesn't attempt to replace the old but to augment it __ and even that scares the
bejeezes out of him. He laments:
The value once placed on a book by a great author is being challenged by the dream of a collective
hyperlinked community of authors who endlessly annotate and revise it, forever conversing with each
other in a never-ending loop of self-references. (25)
Really? The Web has about as much chance of destroying the discrete book as did the movies, radio, and
television. What we are seeing is something new, not the destruction of something old.
But Keen doesn't get that. Nor does he understand that the new abundance of unreliable information
does not change the fact that a greater quantity of reliable information of high quality is also now
available, and that all it takes is a modicum of "neteracy" to dip into that while avoiding the junk.
Scared to death of those without certification, Keen spends a lot of time attacking the amateur (without
ever looking to himself, of course), writing, for example, that:
The reality is that we now live in a highly specialized society, where excellence is rewarded and where
professionals receive years of training to properly do their jobs, whether as doctors or journalists,
environmental scientists or clothing designers. (38)
Such a slavish worship of the specialist is unbecoming (not to mention being a sign of unskilled
amateurism), especially when we are constantly reminded of the failures of the specialists and the