Still the loneliest profession?

Salon's Gary Kamiya is sort of complaining about the raucousness of the Web, like the tenor of the discussion being changed by the din of all the participants. It feels like he's smarting from some trollbites. But I think the democracy and anarchy of the Web are good things. The ivory towers are perhaps coming down, and many more people are involved in the conversations that are going on.

He laments how, as the cost of correspondence has moved from snail mail to click-and-send e-mail, the tone has shifted. Sure it has; that'll inevitably bring about more louts than saints, because louts are more numerous. But I think that kind of spontaneous feedback is useful, if you're prepared to deal with it.

Just like how, say, a rock band needs to get out and perform live to earn their chops, and how studio-centered bands lose something by virtue of their isolation, so I see it with writers, too. I'm a writer, myself, and I understand "the loneliest profession" more than most. But there's electricity in feedback, which is why writer's groups exist at all -- so often someone reads something I've written and they draw forth something entirely different from what I had in mind in creating it. Sometimes people read the wrong thing into something, too, but that's only from my perspective -- from their perspective, it's on the mark.

The usefulness of such feedback is that it's kind of like a straw poll -- if you immediately get a bunch of a particular type of feedback, it's possible that maybe you did get it wrong. That has to be humbling and off-putting for those in the culture-building business, who're used to being seen as authorities -- not necessarily because they're authorities, but because of their privileged perch as people permitted to offer comments on things (sorry for all the alliteration, there). There isn't a loss of power, but there is a loss of autonomy, if the writer pays attention to the comments made. There could be some dreadful accountability for one's words.

I think that's a good thing -- god knows that Rush Limbaugh O'Reilly and Hannity and Coulter and Carlson (and a thousand other reactionary pundits) desperately need to be accountable for their words, although they lack the character to own up to the monster they've created.

For all the talk of the "marketplace of ideas," in practice, it was a command economy, with the public as consumers of the media product. More directly, the press isn't free if you don't own one. But the Net (and blogtech) have lowered the startup costs that kept the vast majority of people out of the media game, so suddenly the marketplace of ideas has become a bustling, chaotic, lively place, when before it was a droning sameness -- just as the Big Three automakers are tottering because they can't compete with the new economy, so are the classic Mass Media outlets suffering because their mode of expression no longer meshes with what the consumers want.

Empowered, the everyday folk with blogs are suddenly able to play the content provider game, for better and worse all at once. Even the simple letter writers (myself included) come to expect that kind of interactivity with their chosen media outlets, and god help the content provider that doesn't let more people in to play; they'll wither and die on the vine.

The Big Three television networks are bleeding audience; the newspaper chains are wilting; magazines, I don't know about them -- they may be able to niche market themselves into long-term survival (?); movies are no longer a sure thing; spectator sports are losing spectators, slowly but surely (except for those willing to pay the premium for tickets). Kids like video games more than movies -- why? Because there's participation in it.

Participation is the coin of the new media realm. I think it's a good thing.