Show me these mythical bloggers — typing feverishly in their parents’ basements, still in pajamas, presumably — who are plotting the overthrow of journalism. Good luck finding them, because the only ones debating that question are either old-media journalists anxious about losing their monopoly or outsiders who understand neither blogging nor journalism.

Earlier this year, a survey conducted by PR Week and PR Newswire found that 52 percent of bloggers consider themselves journalists — cue the snorts and tongue clucking.

But there’s a substantial overlap between bloggers and journalists: 35 percent of bloggers are/were professional journalists, according to a 2009 study by Technorati.

Here are some other stats to consider, found via Marketing Pilgrim:

• Over 75% of reporters see blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue.
• 70% of reporters check a blog list on a regular basis.
• 21% of reporters spend over an hour per day reading blogs.
• 57% of reporters read blogs at least two to three times a week.

That same survey, conducted among working reporters and editors, found that 30 percent of those surveyed have their own blog.

Their figures back up those of Technorati, which also had this to add:

“Despite being perceived by some as enemies of the traditional media, bloggers actually carry a journalistic pedigree. 35 percent of all respondents have worked within the traditional media as a writer, reporter, producer, or on-air personality.

By way of contrast, consider that less than 1% of the US labor force was employed as a journalist in 2006. Monthly magazines and daily newspapers are the best-represented types of media outlets among those bloggers who have worked in the traditional media, with radio a strong third.

And the true overlap reveals itself in the 27 percent of respondents who both blog and work in traditional media.”

The Bloggers vs. Journalism debate promotes a false dichotomy. In truth, bloggers and journalists have a symbiotic relationship that’s increasingly heading towards convergence: a convergence of Old and New that will one day form Now.

So the next time someone suggests that bloggers will kill journalism, just remember: Journalists can be self-loathing; but not that self-loathing.

[Study: 52 Percent Of Bloggers Consider Themselves Journalists | TechCrunch]

[Day 1: Who Are The Bloggers? SOTB 2009 - Page 3 - Technorati Blogging | Technorati]

[75% of Journalists Get Story Ideas from Blogs | Marketing Pilgrim]

According to a new study, today’s college students are less likely than their counterparts of 20 and 30 years ago to agree with statements such as: “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective” and “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”

“Many people see the current group of college students — sometimes called ‘Generation Me‘ – as one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history” — Researcher Sara Konrath to LiveScience.com.

Being overly confident, self-centered, full of entitlement, annoying in general — it’s called being young. Young people have been making those mistakes since the beginning of time. If today’s students lag behind their counterparts, perhaps it’s because youth itself has been prolonged — the average 25 year old from 1979, for example, probably had far more adult responsibilities than the 25 year old of today. And it’s not all their (or their parents’) fault: the job market and the slashing of employee benefits like healthcare play a large role.

As for empathy, some are highly empathic from birth; but most need some hard knocks from life before their puny, feeble Grinch-sized hearts can grow.

I picked up this little gem on YouTube, via a great RSA Animate illustration of the words of Jeremy Rifkin:

“Empathy is the opposite of utopia. There is no empathy in heaven because there is no mortality. There is no empathy in utopia because there is no suffering. Empathy is grounded in the acknowledgment of death, and the celebration of life, and rooting for each other to flourish and be. It’s based on our frailties and imperfections.”

So in other words… give Generation Me some time.

And you have to admire this about Generation Me: they are the most eco-aware and closer to being post-racial, post-homophobic, post-everything than any other generation in history. Sure, they’re a little annoying in other respects. Still, I think a little empathy is in order.

But then, my empathy score is higher than 90 percent of the study’s participants. How do you stack up against Generation Me? Take the 15 question quiz  here and find out.

[Today's College Students Lack Empathy | LiveScience]

That’s exactly what happened to me two days ago, with my prior blog post — but without even trying.

From Pushing Social’s aforementioned post:

“I’ve discovered that the top thought leaders on the web will bend over backwards to help a true fan.”

Very true, that. My top thought leader — one of the top 140 influencers on Twitter – somehow found my post almost immediately after I posted (Google Alerts, perhaps?). He used his Twitter platform to promote my post, called it “clever” even (my self-esteem is going to get a lot of mileage from that, for years to come). How did I find out? I noticed a sudden spike in traffic of rocket-launch proportions — a 1300% increase — which prompted me to investigate. And for one shining moment, I felt like an old-Hollywood starlet discovered at some lunch counter — plucked from obscurity, as it were.

But sic transit gloria — the glory fades. Still, I did pick up some Twitter followers. And I enjoyed  basking in the reflected starlight, however brief.

In the end, though, it’s still the quality of the content that reigns supreme: If I don’t build it, they won’t come (back). So… it’s back to work for me.

[How to Get Your Blog Noticed and Promoted by Super Influencers]

If only Jay Rosen were here — that’s what I kept thinking as I fidgeted and waited for the Q & A portion to start. McChesney’s condescension toward citizen journalism, bloggers, Twitter — basically anything new or revolutionary beyond his ken — was great at eliciting clucks and gasps from the scores of elderly ladies present. But I found it infuriating, and deserving of a Rosen-style smackdown.

I got no such satisfaction. Not in real life. So I’m creating it here, by pitting some of Rosen’s ideas against McChesney’s. Here’s the match-up:

In this corner, we have Robert McChesney, professor of communication at the University of Illinois, host of the weekly radio talk show “Media Matters,” cofounder of the media reform organization Free Press, and author of 16 books on media and politics.

In the other corner, we have Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University, press critic, writer and one of the top 140 influencers on Twitter.

What is “journalism”

McChesney:

“The idea that the Internet and new technologies will magically replace what they’re destroying and create a new business model, [that] we’ll have a whole new world of journalism online that’ll solve our problems for us — this is so much fairy tale and wishful thinking. If there’s one thing you take away from the talk tonight, understand this: to do journalism requires human labor. Human labor, to do it well, has to be compensated. Human labor, to be organized well, has to be in an institution that protects you from powerful interests. If you’re doing journalism well, powerful interests shouldn’t like it. If they do like it, you’re not doing journalism. That takes money. That takes institutional support.

You don’t do that in your pajamas on your computer after you work a day job at Wal-Mart then come home and blog on North Korean politics and think you’re doing journalism. You’re not. You’re BS-ing. It shouldn’t be taken seriously. And you aren’t. That’s not journalism.”

Rosen:

“I sometimes like to think of a journalist as simply a heightened case of an informed citizen. What journalists are good at [are] things that everybody should be good at: knowing how to collect information; knowing how to verify what you are told, which is actually the key skill in journalism, verification; communicating clearly so that you don’t mystify people; explaining how things work; being accurate; being fair; telling stories so that others can understand what’s going on. Those kinds of skills that journalists specialize in are not actually the property of any particular profession. They are things that people everywhere need to learn how to do — unless they’re in the business of deceiving, manipulating, lying, dominating.”

Re: journalism as a “profession”

McChesney:

“If you don’t have a Fourth Estate, the right to not have your newspapers censored, if you don’t have any newspapers, is a meaningless right, it’s a hollow right. I mean, I’ve got the right to play in the National Basketball Association, but it’s a hollow right. I’m not going to make it. I’m not going to try out for the Celtics or the Bulls. I’m just not going to make it. So if I run around saying, ‘Look at me, I can go play on the Celtics!” — well, ‘Who is this moron?’ Well, if you run around and say, ‘Look at us, we have no censorship,’ but you have no press, you’re similarly — you’re a fool.”

Rosen:

“The professionals brought us the mortgage crisis. They didn’t serve me very well. The press didn’t stop it. The people with Harvard MBAs didn’t stop it…. Something went awry in 20th century professionalism. That something — I don’t know exactly what it was — but there is something about ‘We’re the experts, we know, let us handle it, we’ll protect you, we’ll inform you, we’ll understand even if you don’t’ — there was something about that system that went awry. And we have to go back and fix it, and now we have the tools to do that. And I’m more focused on that than I am glorifying the greatness of our knowledge professions.”

To whom does the freedom of the press belong?

McChesney: Freedom of the press belongs to qualified, credentialed journalists who work for news organizations. The Fourth Estate owns journalism.

Rosen: Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. New media means anyone can own one. No one owns journalism.

Regarding Propaganda:

McChesney:  A professional class of institutional journalists is the antidote to propaganda.

Rosen: It’s harder to spread propaganda in a multi-polar world with many sources of information and many players capable of committing acts of journalism.

What’s the solution?

McChesney: Public subsidies for journalism are the answer.

“This is not a tough one. The problem we face with this issue is that we’re blindfolded and handcuffed by ourselves and can’t see the simple truth before us. And the simple truth is this: that the solution to our crisis in journalism is that we have to no longer regard it simply as something done by private interests to make profit. We have to regard it as something that needs to get public support or it won’t exist. It has to be publicly subsidized. We need large public subsidies to have credible, viable, independent journalism or it will not exist.”

Rosen: There’s no one solution; it will require many overlapping systems working together.

Look, McChesney is an authoritative voice with much to offer. There’s just too much Old Think in his vision for the future of journalism, I’d say.

But McChesney did make this compelling point in favor of traditional media:

“Currently only 60 percent of American adults have broadband access in their homes. And as everything shifts to broadband and we lose print media, basically that means 40 percent of the American population are in effect disenfranchised from our culture and our society…. So until we have 100 percent broadband access, and until we guarantee that there’s network neutrality so there can be no censorship by phone and cable companies over content, we have to keep traditional media alive.”

[The direct quotes attributed to Rosen were taken from his recent speech to the World Bank. The direct quotes attributed to McChesney are from his 5/25/10 lecture at the Batavia Public Library. Everything else is my paraphrasing of what I understand their ideas to be.]

1. Be generous. Retweet. Participate in Follow Friday (#FF). Make Twitter lists that others can appreciate. Use the Twitter platform to do some good when you can. For example, by helping people locate answers, or promote a worthy cause, or find a transplant donor for their dying 4 year old child, etc. Show you can be a mensch. Think about it: In whom would you rather invest your limited resources (such as attention)? The generous person who may one day be of service to you, or the person who seems to ask only, “What’s in it for me?”
2. Show some emotion. Don’t be a Stepford Tweeter. Don’t be afraid to show enthusiasm, or passion, or strong opinions. I don’t mean be emotional — there’s a difference. Words express emotion (such as “wow,” “great,” “sucks,” when used sparingly). So do @jayrosen_nyu and @jeffjarvis, for example, but I’d never describe them as emotional.
3. Be unique. The easiest way? Allow snippets of your personality to peek through, where appropriate. Otherwise, you’ll just fade into the Twitterverse. But always remember to retain some mystique. Because an unknown property is inherently more interesting, and I’m always going to want it (you) more.
4. Be smart. Don’t underestimate the intelligence of your audience. Copyblogger crunched some data and found that smarter headlines actually get retweeted more often than those that are dumbed down. As David Foster Wallace once said, the best writers remind a reader of just how smart he/she really is.
5. Make me laugh. Or at least display, on occasion, a well-developed sense of humor. Two Tweeters who do this well (for journo nerds like me, anyway): @FakeAPStylebook and @OHnewsroom
6. Show discerning taste. Prove that you have good editorial taste and judgment. In order to do that, you need to…
7. Include links. Be useful. Point me toward something new. Be a link in the chain, not a dead-end alley.

The Internet, as a source of entertainment, is now second only to television, according to a new study by Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm.

Peruse a site like Openbook, and you’ll see: Facebook is an embarrassment of riches, and crawling with oversharing “reality stars” who entertain with their bad behavior. On the Facebook show, characters cheat, visit strip clubs, tell you when they’re “having a wank,” share the results of their rectal exams, et cetera and ad nauseam.

There’s a reason producers love reality shows: they’re cheap to produce and have high profit margins. The Facebook show is even cheaper to produce — nobody gets paid. Except Zuckerberg et al., that is.

[News Unfiltered: Study Reveals Shift as Social Networks Become 'Social Entertainment']

I suspect Salon’s Glenn Greenwald would say yes:

Indeed, the very notion that it is “outrageous” or “despicable” to inquire into a public figure’s sexual orientation — adjectives I heard repeatedly applied to those raising questions about Kagan — is completely inconsistent with the belief that sexual orientation is value-neutral.   If being straight and gay are precise moral equivalents, then what possible harm can come from asking someone, especially one who seeks high political office:  ”are you gay?”

What possible harm? Er, being gay can still make you the target of a hate crime and get you kicked out of the military, for example — right? If the question is so innocuous, why do others in high political office — see Senator Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I might add — evade the question? Am I alone in seeing the hypocrisy of demanding an answer from Kagan but not from the Senators in charge of questioning and confirming her?

For the record, I believe sexual orientation should be a value-neutral attribute. I understand the Harvey Milk position: coming out to friends, neighbors, colleagues can be the most powerful antidote to homophobia. But what about all the others who don’t share my views? Am I wrong to worry? Is it wrong to be irked when The Gay Question hijacks the Kagan debate and diverts attention from the far more pressing question: Does Kagan have principles, and what the hell does she stand for, anyway? Am I guilty of condescension if I want to “protect” others from being forced to divulge sensitive personal information that can be used against them?

When an openly gay intellectual like Greenwald questions my position, I pay attention, and sincerely rethink my views — as a straight person, perhaps I’m missing something? Who is right?

Answer: I think both Greenwald and I may be guilty of a bit of projection, of turning these questions about Kagan into questions about ourselves, as Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick argues:

So, “Is Kagan an Ivy League elitist” may actually mean “Am I an Ivy League elitist?” “Is Kagan a soulless careerist?” may be read as “Am I a soulless careerist?” and “Hey! Why isn’t Kagan married?” starts to sound an awful lot like “Hey! Why am I not married?”….

If we’re going to talk about Kagan, let’s stick to her record, her writings, and her speeches. And if you want to talk about your love life, looks, academic anxieties, ambition, dreams of marriage, or dating history, I’m also all ears. But maybe let’s just leave her out of it?

Have to say, I get Lithwick’s point. But I still totally respect and admire you, Glenn (you don’t remember me from NYU Law, do you?).

[Equating sexual orientation with "sex life" - Elena Kagan, Supreme Court Nominee - Salon.com]

[Can we please stop talking about Supreme Court nominees like they are real people? - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine]

My conversion from Twitter Skeptic to Twitter True Believer is a recent development — to be frank, I used to look upon Twitter as somewhat of a cultural joke. But thanks to Sree Sreenivasan, professor of journalism at Columbia University, I am starting to learn how to tap into the power of Twitter.

Here are my Top Three Reasons for using Twitter:

1. “Facebook is for people you used to know, and Twitter is for people you want to know.” — Thomas Crampton. Most of the people I follow on Twitter would never “friend” me on Facebook. But on Twitter, there’s no barrier preventing me from reading what they read, and sharing what they share — no permission required. There’s a lot to be learned (for me as a journalist, anyway) from following prominent doers and thinkers in the world of news and media.
2. Twitter is like a virtual water cooler where you can share interesting links with interesting people. In real life, I keep mum about a lot of the things I’m interested in — too risky when you don’t know a person’s sensibility, interests and world-view. But on Twitter, I can congregate around others who are both compatible and also different enough from me to keep things interesting. Those people also serve as my trusted curators who help me sort through the massive amounts of information we’re all bombarded with daily.
3. Twitter beats RSS as an efficient alert system for stories I want to read. And it’s starting to divert some business from Google, too, as a tool for sifting through the Web. Much of the news/stories/blog-posts I read is now coming from Twitter.

For those wondering if Facebook is comparable to Twitter as a communications tool, here’s a helpful bit from TwitTip:

Let’s say you go to a wedding or other social gathering where lots of people know each other. The style and tone of communication there will be more like using Facebook; you chat with old friends and acquaintances, mixing and mingling in an intimate manner. In this setting, people tend to feel more relaxed and “in their element”. Conversations are familiar and center on shared experiences and connections.

Now, when you go to a large party or social event where you don’t know most of the people in attendance, you will use a very different style of communication, more like Twitter; you want to meet people and somehow make yourself known, stand out from the crowd, make an impression, self promote and make new connections. Twitter is like getting the podium and not everyone feels comfortable or knows how to stand comfortably in the spotlight.

In fact, almost all of us, when first approaching Twitter, tend to use it to post useless updates like “Going to lunch”, thinking of it as a another tool to communicate with friends, when in fact, it is more like stepping on to a stage, where you are communicating with an audience and quickly find that you need to find a voice and say something useful and interesting or quickly lose the attention of your audience. People refer to Twitter as a mini or micro blogging platform.

For a good list of links and resources relating to Twitter, check out: Sree Sreenivasan – @sreenet, TWITTER: Sree’s Twitter Guide for Newbies & Skeptics.

My Twitter handle: @shc347

Meanwhile, over on Vanity Fair, they may have unwittingly proposed a solution:

From Billy Reid's Fall 2010 Collection (Yes, that's rat fur they're wearing)

Here are some choice quotes from the VF piece:

“I love the masculinity of it. It’s sort of the bad-ass fur,” [Designer Billy] Reid explains.

Locals have explored other uses for nutria [rat] pelts, including pillows and teddy bears.

“It makes a great blanket,” says Edmond Mouton, biologist and program manager at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. His department’s Web site includes a recipe for “stuffed nutria hindquarters” that serves 15.

I don’t know what PETA will have to say about this. But I can’t imagine the rich fashionistas of the Upper East Side caring. Because if there’s one organization that’s persona non grata on the Upper East Side — where there’s probably more fur per capita than anywhere else — it’s PETA.

Is this another example of “Man’s inhumanity to man”?