Who needs journalists when we’ve got bloggers?
I’ve just listened to episode 190 of This Week in Tech (TWiT), where the assorted experts laid into people considering a career in journalism. I’m paraphrasing here, but the conclusion the guests came to was that the pay sucks (duh!), journalism degrees are expensive (aren’t they all), newspapers are closing hand over fist (sure are), and there’s no need for journalism when we’ve got blogging (WTF!). Let’s get one thing straight: blogging does not make you a journalist, but we’ll get onto that later.
John C. Dvorak, a grumpy tech hack, went one step further during the podcast, by claiming that traditional journalism is dead, and that opinion-based blogging is the future (think I’ll just kill myself now).
“But hold on, you could be right, John. When Gillian Tett was busy poring over financial iregularities for months on end, she should have been blogging, and maybe producing her own podcast. Yeah, that would have been soooo cool. Gillian is a frickin’ dinosaur, man! Objective, fact-based reporting is antiquated, and there’s no place for it on the intehnets.” That’s one response I could reply to Dvorak’s claim with. It would make me a fucking idiot, but it’s a reply. Anyway, I digress; back to the podcast.
The first thing that struck me whilst listening to this show was that I’ve heard it al before. In fact, journalism has been getting a concerted kicking by ‘new media experts’ for months. For example, Jeff Jarvis regularly revels in traditional media’s decline, and - as a result - is now loathed by many journalists, as this Slate article illustrates. Jarvis is paid a lot of money to talk about journalism, and in this choice quote he gives his views on the subject:
The fall of journalism is, indeed, journalists’ fault. It is our fault that we did not see the change coming soon enough and ready our craft for the transition. It is our fault that we did not see and exploit—hell, we resisted—all the opportunities new media and new relationships with the public presented.
Then Sarah Lacy, a columnist at TechCrunch, weighed in, and wrote this article on how journalism schools are stuffy, and akin to ‘foot binding’. (Seriously, that’s what she said.) Sarah’s friend did a journalism degree and no longer has a job; Sarah didn’t get a journalism degree, and she’s, like, writing for TechCrunch. Take that, journo bitch! And Sarah’s doing, like, totally awesome interviews with tech GODS such as Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg. Check out her SKILLZ!
So there you go, journalism is becoming a dirty word amongst the social media set. Thanks to the internet we’re all publishers now, but that doesn’t make us all journalists. At this point you may acuse me of hubris, and being a snobby journalist (hey, stop laughing at the back), but I’m far from it. I’ve commissioned writers with no degree in journalism. In fact, some of the best writers I know have no formal qualifications. But I tell you what they have done, and that’s graft. They’ve grafted their arses off, and they’ve learned their craft the hard way, just as those people that take years out of their lives to complete journalism degrees and work placements do. I recently filled out a questionaire for a PR proffessional, where one of the questions concerned the affect of social media on journalism. This was my reply:
I trained as a journalist for three years at University, and did various work placements on newspapers for another two. In that time I learned about fact checking, staying on the right side of the law, ethics, story structure, interview technique, and many other skills that take time to learn. I’m not saying these skills can’t be acquired, but it takes time. I think the ease of publishing online means that many people are now calling themselves journalists, without knowing the fundamentals of journalism; that’s a concern. However, if you’re talking about the ways in which social media can add to a jornalist’s arsenal, it’s had an amazing effect. Twitter, for example, has enabled non-linear news stories to be covered in truly engaging ways (The Guardian’s G20 coverage being a perfect example). Add to this the feedback you can get via social media, and the audio and video tools that enable you to publish content on the go, and there’s never been a more exciting time to be a journalist.
And I completely stand by this. In my opinion, journalism isn’t dead, and I would never dissuade someone from following their dreams. When it comes to trying to secure a writing gig, that degree could be the thing that swings a job your way. And the future? Well, the publishing medium may have changed, but which are the sites dominating the news landscape? That’s right, traditional news organisations that get the internet. So, you may not be seeing your work in print when you finish your degree, but don’t give up on journalism just yet - it might come in handy.
