de Tutor is a forward-looking concierge in Dallas, Texas, bootblack to the Stars and founder of a virtual series of recovery-based revivalist seminars held in the alley.

Demos is cited in an important piece by Jay Rosen with respect to the increasingly apparent break-down of established “professional order” in many fields, not least journalism.

de Tutor, however, holds forth on what he knows works … “ordered liberty” in pursuit of the practical achievement of pragmatic goals. Using the example of amateurs swarming about an Omiyar.net grant prize, it looks like he places his faith on the “pros” getting the job done.

Demos … on the Pro-Am revolution

We learn about it from a fascinating new study, The Pro-Am Revolution, a 70-page paper from Demos in the UK. It barely mentions bloggers or journalism, and so it is perfect for sketching a larger pattern into which J-blogging fits.

The twentieth century was shaped by the rise of professionals in most walks of life. From education, science and medicine, to banking, business and sports, formerly amateur activities became more organised, and knowledge and procedures were codified and regulated. As professionalism grew, often with hierarchical organisations and formal systems for accrediting knowledge, so amateurs came to be seen as second-rate. Amateurism came to be to a term of derision. Professionalism was a mark of seriousness and high standards.

And of course this happened in journalism in the 1920s through 1940s. University training, professional societies, codes of ethics emerged. This movement created my institution, the J-school, as well as the standard of neutral, nonpartisan professionalism of which Howard Fineman spoke. Demos on the shift:

But in the last two decades a new breed of amateur has emerged: the Pro-Am, amateurs who work to professional standards. These are not the gentlemanly amateurs of old – George Orwell’s blimpocracy, the men in blazers who sustained amateur cricket and athletics clubs. The Pro-Ams are knowledgeable, educated, committed and networked, by new technology.

The twentieth century was shaped by large hierarchical organisations with professionals at the top. Pro-Ams are creating new, distributed organisational models that will be innovative, adaptive and low-cost.

In other words, they cannot be dismissed. “Knowledge, once held tightly in the hands of professionals and their institutions, will start to flow into networks of dedicated amateurs,” says the report. “The crude, all or nothing, categories we use to carve up society – leisure versus work, professional versus amateur – will need to be rethought.” Written about other fields, these words should be read into journalism, which is being hit hard by the Pro-Am trend.

Professionals – in science and medicine, war and politics, education and welfare – shaped the twentieth century through their knowledge, authority and institutions. They will still be vital in the twenty-first century. But the new driving force, creating new streams of knowledge, new kinds of organisations, new sources of authority, will be the Pro-Ams. (p. 67)

de Tutor … on the dynamics in a network of Pro-Ams

so far it as if someone had thrown a bone among a pack of hitherto well-behaved dogs, a massive scrum, and endless battle for rank and clout in the pecking order.

If the time of those involved were valued even at minimum wage, this has to be the most cost inefficient grant making process ever conceived.

Distributed journalism. Open Source journalism. Citizens media. Citizen journalism. We media. Participatory media. Participatory journalism.

What September 11, 2001, was to setting off the growth and enhanced reputation of blogs, the December 2004 tsunamis are to the larger notion of citizen journalism (of which blogs are a part).

Reuters: “The US government, 40 states and territories, and outside groups from the National Football League to the Christian Coalition of America asked the Supreme Court on Monday to hold services like Grokster and Morpheus accountable for the millions of copyrighted files traded over their networks.” 

The bottom line is this: they reached at random out into the Datacloud and found a real friend. And I feel like I have been graced with a real friend in both of them. Given the fact that I’ve been getting interesting messages from distant strangers since 1985, why do I think the big deal? Why is this different? Because these strangers have voices. There’s a lot more emotional bandwidth in the human voice. I’m always surprised by the Meatspace version of someone I’ve only encountered in ASCII. I’m rarely surprised by someone I’ve only met on the phone. But one doesn’t get random phone calls from Viet Nam or China, or at least one never could before.Skype changes all that. Now anybody can talk to anybody, anywhere. At zero cost. This changes everything. When we can talk, really talk, to one another, we can connect at the heart.

The potential of establishing a real emotional connection is exponentially advantaged. And I honestly don’t think it would have been any different had they been guys. In the days since, I’ve received another random call from a guy in Australia. We talked, very entertainingly, for awhile. I’m glad to know him too. (He wasn’t trying to practice his English. He actually seems to prefer his version. He was just doing it because he could.)

And then there is the mysterious imprimatur of coincidence. This had never happened to me before and then it happened twice in a single night with two Asian girls who are within days of being the same age as my eldest daughter. (In fact, Dung Vu is three days younger than Leah.) Somehow this seems too weird not to have been meaningful. (Though this belief could be another symptom of my well-established apophenia.)

Anyway, I feel as if the Global Village became real to me that night, and, indeed, it has become the Global Dinner Party. All at once. The small world has become the intimate world.

I’m beginning to think this Internet thing may turn out to be emotionally important after all.

Advertisers: You have lost control of your message. Get over it.

: VW [Volkswagon] is going berserk over the parody ad that showed a terrorist blowing himself up inside a small but tough sedan. The company is demanding apologies and threatening to sue.

Sorry, guys. That VW has already left the barn.

You are no longer in control of your message, advertisers. You can fight it or you can embrace it.

Learn the lesson from the music industry. They fought. They lost. Big media is trying to learn that lesson now. TV is trying to learn that lesson. Your turn, advertisers.

If you embrace this, I’ll just bet you will find something amazing happen: You will find that your customers are better at marketing your products than you are.

Oh, I know your fear: ‘But what these people say will be off message!’ Well, then, maybe your message is off.

My advice has been the same for a while: “Control the conversation by improving the conversation.”