A nice nibblit from Mr Rosen:
For years I have been struggling with how to put this distinction, between the media, on one hand, and journalism, on another. I think of media as the attention production business, a global project of immense reach and cultural power. It comprehends everything– newspapers, magazines, television, movies, advertising, publishing, the selling of images, the trade in information and of course the Interent. Attention is the media’s true product: your attention, my attention, the attention of our fellow citizens. Once gotten, it can be rented out and that is what advertising is.
— Jay Rosen, thinkpress.org
And from Mr Knobel:
What has happened, I believe, is that we have moved from being tool users to tool managers. We direct processes rather than shape them. To be a tool manager, you merely push a button or use a scanner and the tool does what it is programmed to do. To be a tool user requires judgment, skill and experience.
When it comes to the media, most of us today are tool managers. We switch on the television, open the newspaper or read Google News.
What is so exciting about today’s explosion of diversity in the media is that it holds out the prospect that we can move in a more positive direction. The new tools we have enable more of us to become users rather than mere managers. And it is certainly better to be a tool user than a tool manager.
— Lance Knobel, Nullius in verba: navigating through the new media democracy
And one of them said something along the lines of “the people formerly called ‘the audience’.” I liked it.
