Read Here Comes Everybody - Tummlers, Geishas, Animateurs and Chief Conversation Officers help us listen by Kevin Marks (epeus.blogspot.com)

Bob Garfield's de haut en bas attack on web commenters upset two very skilled conversational catalysts, Ira Glass, and Derek Powazek. The false dichotomy of 'we choose who you get to hear' and 'total anarchic mob noise' was dismissed by Jack Lail too. At the same time, Ben Laurie explained how the IETF's open-to-all mailing lists can be hijacked by time-rich fools, talking about the Open Web Foundation.

In the last few months I came across Derek’s side of the story and so I dug back into archives (literally archive.org) to find the original show and catch the blog post conversation around this controversy. I particularly recall Ira and Jeff Jarvis’ conversations. Somehow I didn’t see Kevin’s portion of the conversation in the comments sections of the others, but I’m glad to have it pop up just a few weeks later to complete the circle.

Of the group, Kevin, as usual, provides some of the best analysis, but he also adds in a huge amount of additional context by way of links.

Society seems to have ripped itself open recently and I can’t help but think that we’re going to need some strong tummelers and heavy work to allow everyone to speak, be heard, and create some change. Kevin’s piece here may be a good starting point.

Perhaps this is the piece some of our mainstream media have been missing from a journalistic perspective? For too long they’ve acted as aggregators and filters, but perhaps they should be spending a larger portion of their time doing some tummeling work on our behalf?