News-Record.com

The hard-nosed traditionalist journalists among us have got to like this suggestion from the Chicago Reader. Michael Lenehan proposes that professional journalists go on strike for a year. Let bloggers, citizen journalists and news robots report the news. Let's have no reporting, no editing, no application of any human intelligence whatsoever to events public or private till January 1, 2007. I'm calling it the Year Without Journalism. Let's all relax, let go, and float blissfully in the information-free state (excuse me, I mean free-information state) that our public awaits so eagerly. (Via Romenesko.)

It's a deliciously cold-blooded rant that makes a lot of sense. Until you think about it for 10 seconds. It reveals the worst side of us, even as it is written by an alt-weekly editor. Defensive. Hard-headed. Blames others, mostly Craig and Google. Feels sorry for ourselves. Thinks that if we hold our breath until we turn blue we'll get what we want, which is a return to the good old days.

Worst of all, it doesn't acknowledge what it should embrace: that the access to new tools, new methods and new information that citizens have we have, too. And we're actually getting paid to use them to serve readers better. Maybe we should try moving forward?

The other problem with his thesis is that nature abhors a vacuum. Our absence would get filled.