The Daily Ablution quotes and critiques a column in The Independent (London) that criticizes various things, including bloggers. Referring to my New York Times article yesterday, the Independent column says:

The blurring between the expertise and experience of the professional and the enthusiasm of the amateur has become part of the culture. . . . The acme of amateur achievement is the weblog -- thoughts, opinions and news items broadcast by an individual and with a potential audience of millions. . . .

More and more Americans, it is now being said, will gather news and views from their favourite blogger, no matter how mad, ill-informed and right-wing, rather than from a newspaper or the news on television. . . .

It was unsurprising to read in The New York Times this week an article by a man with a successful weblog in which he argued that we are all journalists now, that privilege under the law should apply to the humblest blogger as it does to someone working for the national media.

The approach has a sort of crazed egalitarianism to it, but it also suggests that more than just knowledge flows from professionals and their institutions in the age of the Pro-Am. The checks and balances and disciplines that keep intolerance in check may also go. If that is what the new amateurism brings, you can start the revolution without me.

Me, a crazed egalitarian! Cool. But is it really that crazy to think that people who aren't "professional" journalists might actually be one of "[t]he checks and balances" that help keep professionals themselves -- and professionals' own occasional zones of intolerance, whether towards guns or towards President Bush or for that matter towards amateurs -- in check?

See the Ablution post for more, plus a link to the Independent article itself.