"Citizen" Journalism?

Three weeks ago, if asked what components the term media encompassed, I would have listed three. Magazines, Broadcast and Newspapers. Would that make me naive or a little bit ignorant?

Of course I’m not stupid enough not to realise that news could be accessed through the internet, but “citizen journalism” certainly meant nothing to me and neither did it occur to me that print editors may choose to put breaking stories online prior to printing them because well, its just more efficient isn’t it. It seems a day is too long to wait nowadays. People want to see things immediately, and if that means the story comes from an individual source rather than a journalist, well that’s what we’ll use. That is what I did not realise three weeks ago.

The internet has a lot to answer for in the evolvement of the media. It allows us as journalists to communicate like never before, but also, it allows ordinary people to communicate as well. Ian Hargreaves claims that “journalism has become, almost at a stroke, a global enterprise.”And it’s true. It’s not something people have to struggle to access anymore, nor something they even have to wait for. Pictures, videos and audio taken straight from the source are now the most effective ways of conveying the news before it even gets written.

But journalism isn’t an enterprise. It is not an open invitation for budding entrepreneurs. It is a profession, and a skill. A talent. I apologise if I seem cynical, I’m not. Before coming onto this course I would not even have considered citizen journalism to be a bad contributing factor, maybe the recession is making me slightly edgy about my future with a job. I mean, we learn things as trainee journalists.

I’m all for group participation (by this I mean the public you understand), but surely this shouldn’t take over what it is that we do. Our job. I can’t really explain what I mean in terms of other jobs, because, well this isn’t a normal job is it? Perhaps my fear is that we, as trained, employed journalists may eventually become futile, playing second fiddle to Mr. Doe who just posted a video of the latest . . . whatever it may be.