Who will own the news? Journalists, the new dinosaurs? « The rolling people
megalodreamer has written a very interesting article about the impact of blogs on the profession of journalism as well as the spreading of the commoner’s word that is easily attainable now with the use of the Internet.
His entry brings forth certain issues that remains highly entertaining and debatable.
Mainly, the issue of citizen journalism. While I would not say that most people out on the streets (every other you and me) could write better than most journalists, what used to set these two groups apart was the fact that the journalists were empowered. They had the access to publishing their writing to hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions. Now, with the popularisation of blogs, these are achieveable by anyone (although I would not argue that it is the same as publishing, there are other issues involved such as web traffic, credibility, etc. etc.) The providing of opinions and arguments based on the individual now, instead of a social institution (such as a newspaper), are less filtered/ highly differing/ more passionate – and perhaps more honest.
– to be honest, I dont even know if that’s what we want or need in the long run. Is credibility going to be an issue?
Is there a way for the journalist and the citizen journalist to co-exist?
I think so, just can’t be too sure. You can be sure I keep my eyes on this one.
Filed under: Rantings, Transient Spaces | 4 Comments
Similar to Comm Revs where Peter was talking about all those Journalists losing their jobs because news was coming from prosumers!
Regarding your question about if there is a way of coexistence between the journalists and the citizens, I think the answer is yes. This because in some way they both are in the deep playing the same role.
First the Journalist is a citizen like any other, they just have the acces to the media in order to “represent” the opinions of the majority (considering majority as the target of the especific medium). Additionally the “common” citizen is always doing journalism in the way that they are the ones who finally spread the news and theoretically, they are the ones who give sense to the message, because this must be interpreted for becoming a real message, otherwise it is only a signal in the channel, not a sign which has a clear meaning…
The problem touches too many profesional egos and social stereotypes about the journalism activity.
To me the question is if do you have to be a journalist to write news?
it’s an interesting place that we live in at the moment. there is information coming from practically everywhere, and even though we are warned that there is alot of information on the internet that is not necessarily true, we are also encouraged to read things like blogs in order to grasp different opinions about topics of interest.
I don’t think that the citizen journalist will wipe out the professional [yet] but I do think that its making the world of published media much more interesting as we can all access the opinions of ‘ordinary’ people from right around the world instead of relying on the mainstream media for all of our information.
You might be interested to know that in Singapore ( where I’m from), there’s a certain trend of celebrity bloggers taking up the duty of writing columns and what not for the mainstream media. In fact, there’s also an online publication launched by the premiere national daily there called STOMP, which is entirely written by bloggers, i think.