6 Responses for "What is journalism and is it really that essential?"

1. Dilyan November 6th, 2008 at 7:09 pm 1

   Joanna, I think you are quite right that people have approached this discussion with different vocabularies. That has helped heat up the debate but at the same time has created a lot of noise. So let’s get our terms right.

   What is it that trained journalists bring to the table? Well, in my view, nothing. I sincerely believe that there is nothing a trained journalist can do that cannot be done better by an “amateur”. Being trained may help a great deal, but it is not the essential factor.

   Journalism is to a large extent a legacy business. As has been argued elsewhere on this blog, its legacy is built on a mythology. Let’s turn to one of the heroes in this mythology for an example: Veronica Guerin studied accountancy and political research. She was not a trained journalist. She did not achieve what she did because of her training; she achieved it because she was brave and because she could not just shut up. Back then, if you were the kind of person she was, you had to get a job in media to realise your passion. Today, all you need is an internet connection. Both then and now what you do not necessarily need is training.

   I think in the religion of Journalism As A Vocation a “trained journalist” is a mythologem that has nothing to do with training. With a few exceptions, most people tend to use it as a euphemism for “a journalist as I imagine a journalist should be”, in effect allowing them to turn their backs to change but still not appear too backwards. Well, guys, guess what: you do appear too backwards. You appear stubborn and arrogant, and not learned at all. That’s why people do not buy your newspapers, or at least do not buy enough of them so you can remain as you’d like to be, and are instead forced to change.

   This leads me to the second question. What is journalism essential for? This is an essential question. But I’d like to expand it: who is journalism essential for? Society is too big a group for any one media outlet to be able to serve it. What is healthy, successful and sustainable for one group will be exactly the opposite for another. Media organisations then should focus on their individual audiences. How will they do that if they believe that their “training” gives them the right to decide what is valuable, significant, important, dramatic, entertaining, useful or worthy of critique? Their only audience in this case is themselves. If journalism serves no-one else than itself, do we need it at all?

   I feel I have asked more questions than I have given definitions. I’ll try to compensate by an example that I think backs both my points. In Bulgaria, where I am based, there is a website which is rapidly gaining in popularity. You can check it out at http://www.bgreporter.com/ . Yes, it is not in English, but an inquisitive journalistic mind shouldn’t be put off by that; and Google Translate can help you get just about an adequate idea of what the site is about. In short, this is a WordPress blog where every registered user can post. Posts are edited and published. Posters get paid. This is a news website, where the majority of the authors are amateurs. The sheer variety of styles and opinions found there guarantees that, overall, it is a fairly balanced affair. It does not even need to have an idea of what its readers would like to read: it allows its readers to write what they damn please!

   Now, much has been said about how important journalism is for democracy. This, in turn, has been used to justify the need of some group of “trained” journalists who, the mythology goes, are the only ones capable of protecting democracy. But if a young and fragile democracy as Bulgaria’s can endure a website where amateurs play journalists, then surely Britain’s couldn’t be at such a great risk, could it?

   This website also answers another question. If bloggers can be better journalists than professionals, do we need professional media at all? We do, because people have to eat and most bloggers have jobs that do not allow them to devote as much energy and resources to their posts as they could if they were professionals. By paying its audience for writing the stories, bgreporter.com ensures that it will be constantly supplied with content. This is a hint.

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