1. Jon Garfunkel on May 16, 2005 03:13 PM writes...

Thank you for your feedback, dear Corante Gatekeepers! :-)

I find it curious that you chose my citing Seth's words from a year ago vs. any of the 10,000+ words I wrote in this series! I actually cited Seth a good deal. This particular one was central to the whole theme, of course. I don't think your dictatorship/democracy parallel holds exactly. But I will certainly concede the point that Rosen and Gillmor regularly make, that the challenge to the Old Gatekeepers has nudged them to be a bit more humble.

I'd like to read your response to part 7, which plainly gets beyond the conjecture and criticism in favor of highlighting some concrete proposals. Part 8 will be posted tonight or tomorrow, it is a little peek into the immediate future.

2. Ernest Miller on May 16, 2005 03:40 PM writes...

I did pick those words because they did seem to be central to the theme. If I don't write more, it is because I simply do not have the time.

I do believe, however, that there is a significant difference in the type of gatekeeper (since gatekeeping of one sort or another is inevitable). When you have gatekeeping by producer or distributor, there are often legal, economic and similar barriers to challenging those gatekeepers. Producers become gatekeepers when it is too expensive except for a few to produce content. Distributors become gatekeepers when there are only a few means of distribution (such as limited bandwidth). Challenging such gatekeepers is usually difficult in ways that challenging a gatekeeper of audience is not.

3. Seth Finkelstein on May 16, 2005 05:49 PM writes...

Dissent.

The flawed reasoning in the argument is to take one particular constraint in one type of gatekeeping, note that *specific* constraint isn't in another type of gatekeeping, then proclaim the latter type somehow superior (ignoring its own constraints).

There are often "legal, economic and similar barriers to challenging" gatekeepers of attention.
In fact, it is blindingly obvious that those people who are wealthy enough, or have as a job, attending conferences every week, are much more likely to become gatekeepers of attention. Let's discuss this at Davos! :-)

4. Ernest Miller on May 16, 2005 06:20 PM writes...

Is it easier to own a newspaper, or television broadcasting station, or to have enough money to live on? I'm not saying there aren't barriers to entry, but we are talking orders of magnitudes of difference.

5. Seth Finkelstein on May 17, 2005 05:59 AM writes...

I would say that's the same flawed comparison, focusing only on capital expenditures.

Is it easier to be a full-time reporter for a newspaper, or for a website? There are differences, but not orders of magnitude.

Now, from a *business* perspective, there are some shifts - but these don't matter to the 99% of us who aren't venture capitalists or similar.

And since newspapers/radio/TV aren't going away, what prevents people who please those gatekeepers from leveraging that to an overwhelming blog presence? (which is exactly what we see, to a *very* large extent - many dominant A-list blogs are by career media pundits/promotors, despite the noise of their populist rhetoric).

6. Ernest Miller on May 17, 2005 06:22 AM writes...

Full-time reporter for a newspaper, or for a website is a false flaw. The publisher of the newspaper is the gatekeeper, not the reporter, whereas (I presume from your example) it is the writer of the website is the gatekeeper. It may be easier to get a job as a reporter, but that doesn't make the reporter a gatekeeper.

As for the other forms of media still being gatekeepers to a certain extent, you're right. But they've lost some of they're gatekeeper function. If they haven't lost any of their gatekeeper function, then we are not talking about "new" gatekeepers at all, are we?

7. Seth Finkelstein on May 17, 2005 07:16 AM writes...

"it is the writer of the website is the gatekeeper"

Let me try to put it different way - it's important to separate out the "speaking" (content) and "being heard" (business). In both older and newer media, getting an audience is a business, just a slightly different business. Either you try to run your own small business, which is very hard despite the real shifts, or you beg existing business-owners for a position.

The very few people who succeed at creating a new small business (or even more rarely, a new large one) often run around saying how great it is that there are such opportunities. But you almost never hear from the huge, huge, number of attempts which don't succeed.

Now, previously, "publisher" was loosely used as synonymous with gatekeeper (though formally it wasn't defined that way, it has that connotation in normal use). But the saying "Everyone's a publisher" doesn't accurately mean "there are no gatekeepers" - it accurately implies "The gatekeepers are DIFFERENT".

Older media has gatekeepers. Newer media has gatekeepers, based on different constraints. Older media has not lost its gatekeeper "function", though - rather, newer media has different gatekeeper structures. My later point is then that the same class of people, in fact, sometimes even the exact same specific people, can have power in both older and newer media, by leveraging their status pleasing gatekeepers in older media to a gatekeeper position of their very own in newer media.

8. Ernest Miller on May 17, 2005 07:33 AM writes...

I've never argued that there are no gatekeepers. There are gatekeepers now and there will always be gatekeepers since we have a limited amount of attention.

Gatekeepers will leverage their power, undoubtedly, but if that were 100% effective, then we wouldn't have "new" gatekeepers at all.

Finally, I still stick to my point that it does make a difference whether the gatekeepers gain their power through control through production, distribution or audience.