Blame It On Steinski

Books

A smart person giving a good talk about a book he wrote

I’ll start this off by driving in the opposite direction, then looping back:

I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room last week (I’ve been doing a lot of that in the last year), and like a dope, I’d forgotten to bring something to read, so I pick up what turns out to be the latest issue of New York magazine, which I only read once a year when I’m in this particular doctor’s waiting room.

I glommed an article whose thrust is “whither news and journalism, and how about all those newspapers going out of business?” This is a subject I’m interested in, so I dive in. The thrust is that John Stewart is the icon of the new wave in reportage – funny, well-informed, passionate, opinionated, but fair. I can’t say anything about it, I don’t watch television (only streaming video on the computer), but I think Stewart is excellent, so okay.

The closing paragraph of the article quoted someone named Clay Shirky – who apparently wrote some analysis of the news media – as saying “Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.” That struck me as quite succinct and accurate, so I ripped the page out of the magazine (now you know who’s defacing the magazines in all those doctor’s offices), folded it up and stuck it in my pocket.

Yesterday I ran across this creased sheet of paper, and googled Clay Shirky. Well, he ain’t no slouch, that’s for sure. Teacher, author, internet philosopher – he gets around.

Shirky’s just published a book called Here Comes Everybody: The Power Of Organizing Without Organizations. I followed one of the links to a YouTube video of a talk Shirky gave at Harvard about the book. It’s long (42 minutes) but fascinating, even with the occasionally frustrating camera work.

Check it out:

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