READ ALL ABOUT IT -- BUT WHERE, EXACTLY? Three books consider the current state of journalism and its future in a landscape dominated by the Internet
American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media by Neil Henry (University of California Press; 326 pages; $24.95), We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age by Scott Gant (Free Press; 240 pages; $26) and The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture by Andrew Keen (228 pages; Doubleday; $22.95).
Together, these books raise vital questions -- and ignore others that are just as central. Coincidentally, each book squats on a different corner of the ideological triangle that has defined the debate over the future of news. Keen takes one side, angrily lambasting today's online "citizen journalists"; Gant takes the opposite corner, extolling these amateurs; and Henry takes the middle corner floating gracefully above the two others, and not just because he has staked out the middle ground.
