Comments on: Intellectuals vs. Journalists?

By: Gary Dee

Gary Dee — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 02:29:15 +0000

While Tom Friedman treats globalization like a new discovery, he is one of the few who has ably described the phenomenon to the masses as opposed to Lou Dobbs on CNN, who has latched onto people’s fears and xenophobia as his rocket to fame. I must keep reminding myself that while this may be old news to many of us in the tech sector (it’s been over ten years that I got a request to make a presentation, blind over a telephone party line to Bangalore, and hoping that their slides printed black & white onto plastic foils appeared good and were shown in proper order), this is still news to most people.

By: John Trenouth

John Trenouth — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:13:41 +0000

I’ve always found the journalist to be little more than a salesman. For an extreme example, CNN’s Crossfire was always like watching two auctioneers flogging their memes 3 feet away from each other.

Friedman, Brooks, Gladwell, etc… brilliant salesmen, brilliant packagers, not terribly insightful though.

I guess I’m showing my bias here.

By: DJM

DJM — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:55:44 +0000

Richard,

We have been having a similar debate in Janine Wedel’s qualitative methods course at the SPP — we are defending qualitative research (ethno/observation, interview, focus, oral history, etc) vs. quant, but also asking what the difference between journalism and anthro research methods are. (motivations, constraints, peer review, standards practices, office of human subjects, etc.)

After reading drum’s entry, it appears he is claiming to be better off with less knowledge? and accepts that much of that knowledge can only be accrued through lots of weak ties, tacit transfers, spillovers etc. in washington dc or some such place.

as you know richard, it is very possible to live in dc, take in the sites/sounds/knowledge w/out becoming personally invested in either side.

worst of all, Drum admits to being a cat person! no wonder he has few friends.