In an analogy many journalists may appreciate for reasons other than the author’s cleverness, Glenn Reynolds — his Army of Davids, published this year argues technology allows ordinary people to challenge governments as well as the established media — compares journalism to manufacturing beer. You don’t need long, complicated training or expensive equipment to do either.

Most journalists won’t like what Reynolds goes on to say, though. His thesis, as condensed by the typically fair and lucid Economist book review, is that just as there are two kinds of beer, the mass-produced, flat-tasting stuff and the small-establishment, quirky flavour kind, there are two kinds of journalism. Established newspapers and TV news channels offer flat-tasting journalism, while blogs are where you go for real refreshment.

I think Reynolds is cool. I think Rupert Murdoch, who in April 2005 argued that newspapers would perish at the hands of blogs and other ‘new’ media outlets, is uber-cool. But I also think Reynolds, Murdoch and many others who argue along similar lines are wrong (being cool never required that you be right). If you think my argument is hopelessly compromised because I earn my living from the established old media, go on and nastily blog about it. But give me a minute to also argue that we, the old media, would be making a dreadful error, in principle and tactically, if we extend our disinclination to take blogs too seriously to a disinterest in defending bloggers.

Of all the newspapers I regularly read, only two, the Indian Express and the Economic Times, had frontpaged the ban-on-the-blogs story in their Tuesday edition. I wish the story had that every-newspaper-in-town-is-angry-at-the-government feel to it.

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