By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

Alex Beam’s new alter ego

Never mind Mr. Fussy. Following his snarky take on citizen media today, Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam has been redubbed Mr. Grumpy by the redoubtable Jay Rosen.

Unlike the clueless Timothy Rutten, I suspect Beam is waiting for the hate to roll in like a 6-year-old waiting for Santa. This should be worth watching. Although is it possible that, so far, no comments have been posted to his column?

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4 Comments

  1. Alex Beam is one of the high pay, low output Globies who made it difficult for the union to argue to the NY Times that its newsroom payroll was not bloated. Beam’s off-the-top-of-his-head columns sadly reflect how he has allowed his writing skills to wither and make one wonder if he majored in “smug” at Yale.

  2. Michael Pahre

    Alex who? And who ever bothers to read her stuff?

    Don’t they bury columns like that in that throw-away section behind the Sudoku and comics?

  3. Do you feel otherwise, that citizen journalism has a place and/or will replace “traditional” journalism? I never go to the Huffington Post; isn’t it just retreads of stories from the mainstream media? If no one’s around to report those stories, then how can citizen journalism exist? There’s no source material.

    Without the mainstream media, won’t we just be left with “information”, but no “news”?

    • Dan Kennedy

      John: The answers to your question would fill several books, and have. Suffice it to say that traditional journalism and citizen media are two different things; one is not a substitute for the other. The Huffington Post comes much closer than most news sites to copyright violation. Talking Points Memo would be a far better example, as it combines aggregation, commentary and a fair amount of original reporting.

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