Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Rafat Ali whines: "Where are the entrepreneurs?"

A recent blogsurf under "citizen journalism" on Technorati revealed this piece by Mark Hamilton which directed me to this piece on Paid Content...consisting of Rafat Ali's observations at the recent ONA confab.

Rafat's one of those young dudes with enough clout to be at a whole bunch of high-profile conferences...and, like a petulant child who's tired of watercress sandwiches and thousand-dollar toy cars, he whines:
where's the entrepreneurship? The Web 2.0 thing, while may have been over hyped, at least has something at the core of it: innovation, on the cheap, and available to all. These are people who believe, and believe me, that's half the battle won. Why is that mentality not coming to journalism, and specifically online journalism? Why isn't more startup culture being encouraged at media companies? Yes, they'll start blogs on their site, but beyond that, what? Why aren't journalists being encouraged to be entrepreneurs, and the other way around? When will we have our version of the young-out-of-school-entrepreneurs amongst us?


Rafat, here's a clue: the entrepreneurs aren't sitting in expensive conferences. We aren't hearing what you or any of the others Up There are saying. We have day jobs or are in grad school for something unrelated to proper journalism. We do "citizen journalism" or "grassroots journalism" or whatever y'all want to call it on our own, in our own time, NOT under the auspices of the local newspaper or something like Backfence.com. We are in the Technorati Long Tail and don't have time for attending conferences, or whining and kvetching and complaining. We aren't all young, wide eyed, and moneyed--we are all ages, races, and creeds. We sometimes even have trouble finding one another. Yet We are articulate and educated and are blogging daily.

We're there Rafat. We have the Passion you talk about. But you, and most of The Press are still up where the Air is Rare and can't see us. And when you find us, you want to find ways to diminish, disparage, and degrade what we are doing. There is no support from established journalists or organizations--only talk of ways of commodifying us and paying us wages that are well below what someone of less talent and more education earns. Come down from your conferences Rafat and check out what The People are up to. There is passion and raw talent far beyond what you will find in a conference.

Get out of the clouds and into the Long Tail. You'll be amazed.


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2 comments:

Sanford said...

Tish - I take Rafat's commentary as a signal that the big media organizations are trying to understand and work change into their processes - that are hampered by checks and balances that entrepreneurs do not normally have.

See my comment on this at the following here. Think about the challenge of big media versus Rafat and others. Nimbleness is a characteristic we have - and innovation and experimentation is more doable without the fear of major embarrassment of internal political pressures.

Tish Grier said...

Sanford

I get what you're saying....and I also understood some of this was what undergird Ali's comments,.I am, though, still quite put off by the hothouse cogitations of those who are well-heeled enough to attend these Big Shows.

My belief is that many should do as Jarvis suggested (and is noted in Susan Merit's blog, which Jon posted a link to) that the time is coming to engage the barbarians. But, as Jay Rosen and I talked about at We Media many of these august folks are top down communicators who have no clue as to how peer-to-peer communcations are handled.

Thus, even if they had the courage to venture out of their hothouses, how many can communicate effectively? Moreso, how many even want to?

Further, how many are interested in doing anything to give that "leg up" to the barbarians they think are worthy? And what makes a worthy barbarian anyway?

So what continues to go on at conferences is alot of handwringing and preaching to the converted.

Jon

The "clout" you talk about--money and time--is exactly what I mean by clout. Alot of us don't have that kind of clout in this world. At least not yet anyway...

As for the "talent" that big media, or even Yahoo, buys...well, as I said, is it "talent" per se, or is it the kind of talent that is nurtured with a fancy education--and is that *really* talent? Is "talent" only limited to people of a certain age who graduate from a certain college program, or is there more to it than that? Nowadays, the term "talent" is more or less relavent to what school a person graduated from and the connections he/she has made. Why else do you think that people scramble to get their kids into the best daycare money can buy even when they can't afford it?

oh, and thanks for posting the link to Susan's entry. Really great stuff!