We the Media: The Death of Professional Journalism?

I think my greatest fear was realized last semester in a class I took called "Journalism in the Digital Age." My undergraduate degree is obsolete.

I was a dual major in broadcast journalism and international relations at Syracuse University - graduating from one of the top communications schools in the country, The Newhouse School.

Sadly, everything I learned culminating in my top-rate (and very expensive) degree was shot down by my last class and by Dan Gillmor's book "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People" which sadly realizes the demise of professional journalism and applauds citizen journalism as the future of journalism.

All the standards of professional journalism, the inverted pyramid method of writing, the ethics and morals that journalists should hold when reporting a story are no longer reserved for a trained elite group of "journalists". Today, anyone can be a journalist without any sort of formal training. This brings about an interesting debate of journalism as an activity vs journalism as a profession. Which is it? I graduated thinking that it is a profession - but today's media landscape, and Gillmor's book are undoubtedly proving me wrong. Citizen journalists are proving that journalism is an activity that anyone can participate in.

I'm not denying the power of citizen journalism. In fact, I am a citizen journalist, spreading news and coming up with original ideas through my blog and my Twitter page. But citizen journalism also brings up many complex questions: what about the ethics, morals, and standards that are associated with journalism as a profession? How do laws that protect journalists and freedom of the press apply to citizen journalists, such as a bloggers? While I agree with Gillmor that citizen journalism - "grassroots journalism" - is changing the media landscape and changing the power and influence that "Big Media" companies have held throughout history, I still believe that a business model outlining a symbiotic relationship between grassroots and professional journalism will be the successful one moving forward. Gillmor outlines several business models including the "tip jar" (paying bloggers and other independent writers to cover stories that people want to hear), advertising, paid/content/subscription models, and niche publishing, or "nano publishing" - sites that target very small specific users. Niche groups can appeal to advertisers wanting to reach a particular demographic.

Take the example of OhMyNews, the South Korean news site that's based on citizen journalism that Gillmor looks at as a case-study in his book. Their model is based on the symbiotic relationship described above - they employ a core of professional editors and journalists and then solicit articles, columns, interviews and more from a cadre of citizen journalists. The professional editors then select the stories from the citizen journalists based on their meeting journalistic standards such as integrity, factual accuracy, style, etc. This "collision of journalism and technology" as Gillmor says, is helping to facilitate the rise of citizen journalism: giving citizens the power to select and create the news they digest.

I spend most of my time at work touting the benefits of technology and how empowering it can be. Similarly, Gillmor takes us on a quick trip through the evolution of the Internet, where he explains how the "read only" web developed into the "read/write" web that calls for active participation among users through wikis, blogs, etc. This type of technology is the vehicle for grassroots journalism and can help us understand the direction journalism is moving in and can help us devise successful models for the future.