Andrew Keen told me that the one glaring omission from our list of public intellectuals was Arianna Huffington, the Greek-born socialite who is turning the US political media upside-down with her blog-cum-aggregator-cum-celebrity-gabfest the Huffington Post.
I didn’t get it. After all, while the HuffPost may have a readership extending into the millions, and while it may even represent a serious threat to the future of the newspaper industry, how does this make its proprietor—who seems to change her mind more often than John Gray—worthy of the tag intellectual?
But in his portrait of Huffington in the new issue of Prospect, Keen suggests that we may be witnessing the emergence of a new kind of intellectual, one whose influence is measured not in terms of his or her ideas, but by the quality and extent of his or her personal network. And no one has a more powerful network than Arianna. Click here to read his piece in full, and let us know your thoughts below.
I donot think newspapers must afraid too much to HUFFPOST.This is a new kind of yellow journalism.Yes traditional newspaper must change themselves.
First they must close down their old formet, and bring their newspaper on web free of charge, increase clissified advertisement on web.give more international news.
Most important change the news coverage, in news business reliability is most important. Yellow newspaper never reliable all over world.They are cheater and reader never balieve them,they are prosper today because no alternative or say competator to them so they are so popular.
The article carries the fascinating possibility that in an age when no newspaper can afford the heavy costs of foreign journalism, the BBC’s publicly funded network might mean that Britain controls the world’s future supply of news from smaller countries. If it survives the current assaults from Murdoch newspapers and individualistic objections to hypothecated taxation, it could end up being one of the UK’s most valuable assets.
I barely stopped myself from pasting the quoted phrase “attention shoppers” into the browser search box before finishing this article.
I think Mr. Keen’s point is overstated, as is his “Rise of Amateurism” thesis. Though his Prospect article is interesting in pointing out the cost benefit analysis of “Blogs” versus Newspapers.
The decline of newspapers and rise of blogs has much more to do with the growing distrust of “Mainstream Media”. The replacement of good journalism with punditry and use of media outlets as stripped down corporate profit machines have made people cynical of big news media.
This point is supported by the difference in media cynicism between the UK and US. The BBC anchors the news market in the UK, effectively setting the status quo in how we interact with media and news. The US has no such device, and this has lead to watered down news teams, then poor coverage (ie Judith Miller) but increased gas-bagging editorials (CNN’s Glenn Beck, Fox News in general), then to cynicism, then to market alternatives, then to Ms. Huffington.
I wonder if Mr. Keen has not mistaken the cause for the effect.
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Arianna Huffington is no more a public intellectual than Guido Fawkes. HuffPost is not the NYT, WSJ and Washington Post provided on line to a wider audience. It is half way between the thinking type’s tabloid and the Daily Red Top. It seems to rely mainly, like Guido Fawkes, on establishment tattle - which has to be simultaneously hyped up and dumbed down to attract the advertisers that provide its revenue.
No rose-tinted glow should be attached to the BBC either. It is not a public intellectual with its staged and entirely false shouting matches between politicians and arrogant reporters. Its private green-room agreements before the news shows let politicians dictate what will be discussed - the less they are interviewed the louder the shouting match to compensate. It has no case for its licence fee as it is not independent and not the arbiter of broadcasting standards. It provides bonuses to executives guilty of criminal deceit against its viewers and listeners.
Quite right. Huffington is not as intellectual as me.