There are times when I’m a contrarian, going against the grain with my thoughts and my actions.  At the same time, I tend to place a certain amount of trust in authors that I respect.  And so I thought I’d try a little experiment to try, at least mentally, to challenge an existing trusted source of information.

Clay Shirky wrote about the current age of chaos the world media are entering as newspapers are starting to collapse, with no obvious replacements in sight.  He compared the current dilemma that some newspapers (probably lots of newspapers) are facing with declining ad revenues and increased competition from many sources on the Web to the introduction of the printing press and the changes that it brought to the world.  Shirky got a lot of kudos for his article from various sources, including Tim O’Reilly.

Profoky Neva attempted to critique Shirky’s blog post.  Somehow I came across Profoky’s article via some conversations that I was monitoring on Twitter and decided to give it a read.  I had been following Profoky Neva on Twitter for awhile and I had a vague sense of this person being unafraid to ask questions and stir things up a bit.

I have been pretty clear in my support and admiration for some of Clay Shirky’s work.  I figured that it would be a good exercise to try and look at his article from a critical point of view.  I spent a fair amount of time reading and thinking Shirky’s blog post and Profoky’s as well.

Some thoughts on the Profoky article:

• I admire Profoky’s willingness to critique Shirky’s article.
• I think the author has some good points about questioning the real impact on free services like Craigslist on newspapers (no question that classified ads were hurt, but they haven’t died either AND they faced plenty of competition from other printed publications that offered free ads).
• Generally speaking, I think it’s fair that Profoky did try to poke into specifics a bit.
• However, Profoky did themself no service by taking an antagonistic stance toward Shirky himself and Shirky’s other writings and activities instead of sticking to the subject at hand.  I didn’t seen the same “anti-Catholic bias” in Shirky’s article that Profoky did, as an example.  And, the whole Bolshevik theme running throughout the article grew tiresome, frankly.  Basically, it seems to me that Profoky amped up the venom and hyperbole in order to get some attention.

And now the Shirky article:

• Shirky is a very good writer and has talent for explaining concepts in an easy-to-understand manner.
• At the same time, you have to go on the leap of faith that Shirky knows what he’s talking about and has done his homework, because this article deals in generalities and contains references to some information that I haven’t read.
• I think he’s correct in that newspapers took a typical approach to dealing with competition (they tried to neutralize it.  Unfortunately, for them, they failed.)
• I think his overall analogy of the introduction of the printing press (and its effect on society and culture) is similar to the lack of willingness that many consumers have to pay for content.  It’s a shift of power from one group to another that can take a long time to sort out.  I’d argue, however, that it wasn’t just the fact that the Bible became available to many via the printing press that lead to massive cultural change.  It’s also the fact that you eventually didn’t need to know Latin to read the book, nor be forced to hear about it through the clergy, that led to such change.
• I think that Shirky overemphasizes the role in corporate advertisers in subsidizing news coverage (e.g. the Iraq bureau).  He seems to imply that corporate advertisers knowingly subsidized specific types of journalism,  which I just can’t fathom.  There’s no way they could knowing do that, especially without compromising editorial integrity.  Later on, Shirky seems to contradict his previous assertion, which confuses things a bit.
• The fact remains that there are still numerous news outlets, albeit small ones, across North America and other parts of the world, which are still in business and they will undoubtedly survive in some form.  There are still millions of people who are far more comfortable reading a newspaper than looking at a computer screen, even if the computer version is essentially free.  IMHO, newspapers are at least one generation away from serious trouble, when Generation Y hits the late 30s/early 40s.  However, newspapers which have a significant number of web savvy readers are probably going to see their print editions hurt and hurt quite badly.

And so on.

I still have a mainly positive outlook on Shirky’s article after reading and thinking about both articles.  However, I’m glad that I did read the contrarian opinion, despite any misgivings that I had about it.  I think we need to question our beliefs from time to time, even when they come from trusted sources.  These types of checks and balances are important in any system… or society.