A recent online war erupted in Edmonton between the ‘new journalists’ represented by bloggers and twitterers and the old media. Basically an actor and recipient of online reviews reacted badly in the comments section of a blogger and this set off a series of other posts online that grew to massive proportions.

I chimed in on Mack’s site (boyfriend of the original blogger, and the real reason it grew to such proportions) just because I could… Ain’t the internet grand!

# Bruce K Says:
August 18th, 2010 at 1:24 pm

I spent years in the theatre. It’s a family. Any bad review hurts and you tend to leap to the defensive. But I’m going to guess that Jeff (being of that ‘border’ generation) isn’t really all that confident of the place of the internet in the new world. Hell, reading the comments here reinforces for me that most of the professional journalists are still struggling.

A few of my favorite online personalities have been engaging in flamefests and hurt feelings of late (I almost got sucked into a few) and it occurs to me that there is no satisfactory paradigm for conflict reslution in this new type of conversation.

I think the thing to take from this is there is a communication gap. Mack doesn’t get why Jeff would lash out using a particular forum rather than in person and Jeff fails to realize that the internet shouldn’t replace human contact in conflict situations.

We need a new rule book, but I for one am starting to believe rule #1 will have to be “Just walk away, because there are no winners when everyone has a voice.”