Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class

Press Think by Jay Rosen | Jun. 4, 2007 (News Analysis)

I hope the San Francisco Chronicle keeps Neil Henry's essay--Google Owes Big Journalism Big Time--free and clear of any pay walls. Link rot must not be allowed to set in, for this is a document.

Henry teaches journalism at UC Berkeley, after a distinguished career at the Washington Post. He has a new book out, American Carnival ("Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media.") According to this account, Henry almost became dean at the Berkeley ... Full Story »

Posted by Fabrice Florin

See All Reviews »

View

3.3

by Jami Dwyer - Oct. 1, 2008

This is an impressive collection of responses to Neil Henry's suggestion that Google fund journalism. But I'm not sure Rosen adds much to those responses here. He's awfully quick to dismiss an entire generation of experts as "curmudgeons" over one less-than-perfect opinion piece. He seems more interested in the drama of all the Internet reaction than in nailing down exactly how Henry got it wrong. (Henry suggests that Google owes a special debt to good reporters, when he should have made a more general argument that we all do. Also, Henry completely lets off the hook newspapers that went/are going online slowly and clumsily.)