Thoughts on 'Amateur Hour'

So I finally got around to reading Nicholas Lemann's article "Amateur Hour" in The New Yorker, and frankly, I was surprised at how mild Lemann was in his criticism of citizen journalists and bloggers. The title and subtitle of the article gave me the impression the author was an angry writer foaming at the mouth, ready to rip into the new media world. Lemann's article, however, was generally very fair to citizen journalists and not as antagonistic as I was expecting. His main message seemed to be pointing out it's possible citizen journalism isn't and won't be everything it's built up as being.

I'm not sure yet if I agree or disagree with that conclusion. Having said that, Lemann did provide an effective defense of the above point, providing, for example, a portion of a citizen-journalism story that was apparently selected in a contest to determine the top two citizen journalism stories. Surprise, surprise! The story didn't appear to be especially good. This led Lemann to the following conclusion: "The content of most citizen journalism will be familiar to anybody who has ever read a church or community newsletter — it's heartwarming and it probably adds to the store of good things in the world, but it does not mount the collective challenge to power which the traditional media are supposedly too timid to take up."

I'm not necessarily endorsing Lemann's views here, but I do think he made some good points worth considering in "Amateur Hour."