I’d like to think Robert Stacy McCain had his tongue planted firmly in cheek when he wrote this, but if not, it may be a bad sign about the future substance of new media:

In the New Media age, Internet traffic is the only arbiter of success, and in journalism nowadays you’re nobody if you’re not getting Twitter traffic from celebrities.

If traffic is the only arbiter of journalistic success online, then the Web is destined to become a tawdry, sensational, muckraking tabloid.

The Internet already has that reputation thanks both to people who want to be tawdry, sensational muckrakers and to traditional journalists who have been emphasizing their bad behavior for years. But I’ve seen too much good journalism online to believe that McCain is right — yet.

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