Reconsidering Carr’s citizen journalism essay

A few days ago, I posted an excerpt from a TechCrunch article by Paul Carr, who argues that citizen journalism -- which he partly associates with the urge to grab a camera phone instead of trying to help -- is nothing but egotism bordering on a detachment from humanity. "As long as we're all losing our perspective at the same time...," he writes, "then we don't realize that our humanity is leaking away until it's too late."

That post has drawn quite a few comments (for my blog) but they are on a slightly different track than some of the things I've been reading about Carr's essay. Hence the new post discussing Carr again.

Dave Winer, who I respect more with each post of his I read, has some strong opinions about Carr's essay, and he's not the only one.

Winer is blunt, calling Carr's article "rubbish," "disgusting" and link-bait, which he says is typical for TechCrunch. Carr, he writes, is impugning citizen journalists by association. In other words, by Winer's reasoning, Carr would also deduce that his entire crop was bad if he found a worm in one apple.

The article was link-bait, and the more I reflect on it, the more torn I am. Yes, the Twitter response to Fort Hood was a learning experience and a reminder that journalists need to consider their sources before running with any story, and, yes, Carr's article reminded me of that need.

But should I praise an article that's flawed in so many other ways just because I can pull an abstract moral out of it? Would that be like finding the silver lining in the writings of the Unabomber?

Yet, if I expect all of my lessons to come from texts that I agree completely with, I'm afraid that I'll never learn anything.

Related posts:

1. Citizen journalism has a cost
2. David Carr and the iTunes model for journalism
3. Notes on Nicholas Carr
4. Journalism can’t be a one-way street anymore
5. Consider the journalism on Twitter, not whether Twitter is journalism