Professional amateur-hater Andrew Keen gets raked over the coals by Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas Zuniga.
On page 52 of Keen's silly book The Cult of the Amateur, Keen writes:
Unfortunately, the internet is bloated with the hot air of these amateur journalists. Despite the size of their readership, even the A-List bloggers have no formal journalistic training. And, in fact, much of the real news their blogs contain has been lifted from (or aggregated from) the very news organizations they aim to replace.
It is not surprising then that these prominent bloggers have no professional training in the collection of news. After all, who needs a degree in journalism to post a hyperlink on a Web site? Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, for example, the founder of Daily Kos, a left-leaning site, came to political blogging via the technology industry and the military.
Kos responds by listing his education and professional background as a journalist, which anyone with access to the Internet can easily discover for themselves.
Moulitsas earned two bachelor degrees at Northern Illinois University (1992-96), with majors in Philosophy, Journalism, and Political Science and a minor in German.
After a hitch serving as an artillery fire director at the headquarters for a missile battery, he attended Northern Illinois University, winning dual degrees and majoring in philosophy, political science and journalism and minoring in German.
From there, it was on to Boston University, where he earned his law degree.
"I knew in law school that I never wanted to be a lawyer. It was a way to kill three years of my life," he offered with a smile.
He could have become a reporter–there was a job offer from the Associated Press–and he did freelance for three years for the Chicago Tribune, "but I decided I didn't want to live vicariously through other people's lives."
Link (Thanks, Gary!)
