We Judge Because We Care

Freddie DeBoer responds to Shirky and me:

I can’t understand the career journalists who talk with such knowing disdain and casual disregard as their industry goes down in flames. Yes, everyone wants to appear with it and cool and ahead of the curve, but when you say that you value something and yet essentially cheer its demise, that’s pretty lame. Many journalists aren’t just whistling past the graveyard, they’re chortling past it. Perhaps I’m misreading, but I don’t actually see grim humor in the face of great sadness. I see a ton of people not wanting to be seen as one of the ones who didn’t get the memo. The fear of being someone who doesn’t realize his or her industry is dying seems a great deal more meaningful to many journalists than the sadness of the collapse of an at times great and much loved American industry. Better to mock the rubes, it seems, than to mourn the loss.

The hostility Kain senses isn't due to schadenfreude induced glee, it's from frustration built up over the years because those who foresaw the media blood bath coming – often bloggers and others familar with new media – were repeatedly ignored, and still are.