About a decade ago, the term Fifth Estate was all the rage. If the Fourth Estate was the traditional news media, then the so-called Fifth Estate comprised activists, bloggers, citizen journalists and entrepreneurs who, at their best, helped to inform the public and enrich civic discourse. The term Fifth Estate began to evaporate (perhaps because of a bad movie by that title) at a time when social media and their influence—good and bad—spread like kudzu.
If you merge the Fourth Estate with the Fifth Estate (no, you would not get the Ninth Estate!) you have about two-thirds of the group I have been calling public writers.
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