Unprofessional journalism
The report on mediablog about professional vs citizen journalism started me to think about the subject.
This contra post addresses Citizen journalism vs. professional journalism I posted on The Editors Weblog, but first summarize its content:
- an amateur loves to do something
- a professional does something just for paying the bills
Certain core values and practices of traditional (professional) journalism—such as objectivity, accuracy, corroboration, avoiding conflicts of interest, transparency, editorial oversight, etc.—exist in order to enhance our integrity and thus earn the audience’s trust., says Amy Gahran.
Accuracy: bloggers don’t really report so what’s there to be accurate about?
Accuracy. Professional journalists claim they are accurate, however, they learned how to write and not all those fields they are writing or reporting about. Just pick up a usual journalist: she needs to interview dozens of people of different fields every month. Does she claims to have accurate background on each field? No, she knows how to write, preferably even how to ask, and when everything goes right, she even sends the draft for review to the interview partner.
Let’s go to the other side, take a professional from some field. For the example, let take someone active on the multimedia scene. She reports weekly about what she has done, what new ideas she has – with the correct background knowledge. Let’s call this person the professional amateur journalist.
More and more blogs are started by such people who have reached great knowledge in certain areas; and while working in this area, they still have time to blog in the area. These professionals are creating valuable content. And thats what the mean journalist are fearing from, thats why they are every time telling how useless blogs are.
Even if these professional amateur jorunalist are not the best at writing (still the content goes through), are they creating less value than professionals, who can only report and not create?
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