Winer: Amateur isn’t below professional
Amy Gahran at Poynter points to the interview last week of Dave Winer by Rocketboom. This is Amy’s favorite quote and now mine too.
“Amateur is not below professional. It’s just another way of doing [media]. The root of the word amateur is love, and someone who does something for love is an amateur. Someone who does something to pay the bills is a professional. The amateurs have [more integrity than] the professionals. If you’re an amateur you have less conflict of interest and less reason not to tell your truth than if you have to pay the bills and please somebody else.”
Let’s not forget that the idea of elevating professional journalism to its current pedestal was the social engineering dream of Walter Lippmann, who viewed the masses as ignorant and in need of an educated elite to lead them, among which were “professional” journalists.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
April 25th, 2006 at 7:00 am
Winer forgets a couple of key points:
1)amateurs have to work very hard to get cred–unless they’re writing as off-the-clock professionals. Insiders who become outsiders are the most credible amateurs.
2)amateurs sometimes have big egos that cloud their objetivity (think about the Wal-Mart bloggers.)
3) amateurs occasionally like to eat too, and usually also need someone to pay the bills. Without proper nutrition and electricity, passion, espcially for blogging, can go by the wayside pretty quickly.
April 25th, 2006 at 9:31 am
As a "professional" TV producer and an "amateur" still photographer, I can appreciate comments trying to define what each is.
But, undeniably, both professionals and amateurs can be good or bad, they can have good works and bad works, and they can have days with passion and days of grind and boredom.
I think it’s good to remember that status and pecking order are always temporary. We’re all capable of a wide range of creativity.