An Interview with Andrew Keen, Author of The Cult of the Amateur

Andrew Keen, an Advocate of Professional Journalism, Says Participatory Media is Hurting Culture

Andrew Keen sounds a bit ticked off. It's been twice already that citizen journalists have scheduled interviews to talk about his new book, "The Cult of the Amateur." And twice they've canceled on him. This doesn't bode well for citizen journalism, says the author and Internet executive who rails against social media.

"It probably reflects the inadequacy of amateur media," he says over the phone on Wednesday - in the third attempt at the interview. "No excuses."

Keen worries about amateur media - and its many monikers: blogging, citizen journalism, social media, Web 2.0 and user-generated content. The flood of blogging increases the likelihood that misinformation and poor quality will prevail on the Web, Keen says. The lack of editing and the dearth of expertise compound the problem.

His book, "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture," debuted in June and ranks 5,930 in sales on Amazon.com's book list. In it, Keen writes that egalitarian media creation is "threatening the very future of our cultural institutions." Amateurs can't write whatever they want - especially on topics like Iraq - because their facts, expertise and judgment are suspect, he says.

"You can't sit in your underpants in Indiana and blog about Iraq," Keen says over the phone, noting that such efforts shouldn't be taken seriously. "It's not edited. That's the other problem."

Keen wasn't always a skeptic. A self-described Internet entrepreneur who founded the short-lived Web venture AudioCafe.com in 1996, he dubs himself a Web 1.0 pioneer. He participated in what he calls a "Russian Revolution" of Internet media.

He writes in his book that he drank the participatory media Kool-Aid and started believing that a backlash against traditional news outlets and a democratization of media was essential.

But it was in 2004, at a media counterculture summit in California, that Keen realized participatory media was, as he says, "useless." He worries that a rush of blogging is having deleterious effects on information consumption. But it's not the tools, he maintains; it's how people use them.