And thanks for the heads-up on Hayden.

Ok, I’ll force myself to be constructive. In my far-ranging travels across the blogosphere, I haven’t come across anyone who’s put more effort into building online conversations than Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

She takes it very seriously, and truly believes reader interaction is the best part of blogging. She’s convinced the only way to nurture conversation is to tend it like a garden, weeding out the chaff and nurturing the newbies. Here’s her moderating manifesto.

The conversations are wide-ranging and very informative, on subjects from politics (decidedly liberal, although she encourages constructive, non-abusive dissension) to knitting. Unfortunately, the current posts aren’t the best examples of what happens when everything’s hitting on all cylinders, as she’s been a bit under the weather lately. If you’re interested, you might ask her to point to some of her favorite posts.

Yes, please

I prefer to define journalism narrowly. For me it must include an editorial process. But I am quite willing to accept a wide range of media and styles. And I don’t necessarily think journalism requires an organization although it may require an institution (i.e. rules of some sort).

It’s the Greek noetic field I was trying to highlight. Their rhetoric was conversational (yet highly contentious) in the way I suppose could be made possible by the internet. They did not practice journalism as we understand it. But what they did practice was far more conversational than anything we have ever practiced.

Um, ok, I guess I screwed up my point by trying to be cute. Let me try again.

I am not clear what all qualifies as “journalism” in your thesis. Specifically as it pertains to your paragraph beginning, “Let’s be clear about what I’m claiming:”

I am skeptical of the importance of said “journalism” if narrowly defined in the metaphor shift.

I used the Greek example to question the importance of “journalism” in achieving a conversational noetic field.

I tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to use your example of a conversational noetic field that predates what you have defined as “journalism” on Rhetorica to question whether such a metaphor shift could occur as part of a changing noetic field in the Internet age. That “journalism” as you define it might be a lagging indicator rather than a leading one and because of social-technological changes … no problem.

I say this because I perceive that you and Jay have a “traditional press” (especially print) bias. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but that you may subscribe qualities to something you care for that might not actually exist in new and unknown terrority.

S- The Greek history from the Primer doesn’t mention noetic field specifically, but I give a good description of their noetic field. Its rhetoric allowed something like a conversation in civic discourse.

Remember to take into account my qualifiers

Re: can’t help myself

Apparently not. But this is something that needs to be done. So perhaps I’ll actually do it

-40-

Andrew Cline wonders what “post press” means for his metaphor shift to “journalism as conversation”. Don’t worry Andy, it’s alive and well. But it probably won’t come from the “traditional press”. In fact, it might well rise from the ash heap of the …

Ugh. Lord save us, his list grows longer. You just can’t help yourself, can you?

Question: Why not “Post Press” as a part of the process or even the engine of change?

Curiously, I looked but could not find “journalism” or press in your link to the noetic field you provide as the example of “a conversation must mean that the interlocutors are willing to exchange ideas and learn from that exchange”.

Perhaps you should examine with greater skepticism this sentence: “If I am correct about the cultural importance of journalism, then it must shift if other forms of discourse are to shift.”

In fact, I would argue that the trends that have led to “post press” are part and parcel with “journalism as lecture” creating the void needing to be filled with “journalism as conversation”.

But I think you should seriously consider the Information Age trend of conversational flow around gatekeepers.

That a current incarnation of journalism can be replaced, or at least supplemented. That “journalism” (in some form) exists outside the walls of any newsroom and might lead where “journalism as lecture” spewed from within those walls is bureaucratically slow to change.

That the hundred year tradition of a White House press corps has been witness previously to such a metaphor shift and change in noetic field. And before that, the country managed more than 100 years without a resident White House press corps.

It’s just a thought. Perhaps seasoning for your thesis by distinguishing between Time’s Arrow/Time’s Cycle (also here and I included it in analysis here).