Shirky, Clay. “Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing.” Networks, Economics, and Culture.3 October 2002. 6 December 2005. http://www.shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html
“A lot of people in the weblog world are asking “How can we make money doing this?” The answer is that most of us can’t. Weblogs are not a new kind of publishing that requires a new system of financial reward. Instead, weblogs mark a radical break.”
He argues that weblogs are not professional because there is not a limited access to publishing, which is a requirement of professionalism. Weblogs destroy the intrinsic value (work it takes) and extrinsic value (seeing work done, money) away from traditional publishing. He is celbratory of this and states, “This is mass amateurization, and it points to a world where participating in the conversation is its own reward.”
