conversations at work

The director of another college communications department in the office where I work came to my office on Tuesday looking puzzled. He was carrying an older issue of the student newspaper I advise. As I often see people carrying that newspaper and looking puzzled, I wasn't alarmed.

"So," he said, "Did you read this?"

I draw in a deep breath to start my well-rehearsed spiel about how I do not read the paper before it is printed because that isn't ethical and ... I realize he's pointing to a word in a letter to the editor. And that word is "Wikipedia." In the letter, a student is pointing out an error in a previous student newspaper article. The letter-writer suggests that the newspaper editors should have looked at Wikipedia.

"Do you think they get the irony here?" he asked me.

"No. I don't," I said, sighing.

He looked at me puzzled.

"People don't know what they don't care to know. And obviously, people don't care to know that Wikipedia isn't exactly 100% credible."

He mumbles something about teenagers, and I shot him a look. "No, no, adults too."

He rolls his eyes, obviously remembering adults, seemingly informationally-savvy adults that are also swindled by Wikipedia.

I pull Andrew Keen's book from my bag and hold it out to him. In what felt like a spiritual moment in the religion of information, he took it.

"He understands," I said.

My visitor returned yesterday, singing Keen's praises. I said hold on, look at this. I showed him where yesterday, BoingBoing.com called Keen a "professional troll and spokesdouche for internet-fearing reactionaries."

We discussed, and realized that yeah, of course BoingBoing is going to react that way, because BoingBoing's whole position is Internet=everything great about culture. It's almost as if your position defines your opinions on everything. I'm a journalist, a dyed-in-the-wool pen-and-paper journalist, so of course I think the Internet is a bit overrated. But I'm charged with churning out the next generation of journalists because I'm a newspaper adviser (and now also an English professor), so doesn't that position demand I be a steward of technology, no matter how useless it might be?

Bottom line: it's bells-and-whistles vs. meat-and-potatoes. Until they can figure out how to fill those Internet bells with meat, I'm not buying.