This video offers some interesting insights from New York Times columnist David Carr, and Bloomberg Media Chairman Andrew Lack, on the topic of the future of journalism;
“In real time we can now know what the source is telling is true or not.
“The bag of tricks that the average journalist has is so much bigger than it used to be” (Carr, 2014).
“Maybe we’re walking into the best of all possible eras for what we do for a living” (Lack, 2014)
“The increasingly complex relationships between news production and consumption, between the amateur citizen and the professional journalist, and between ‘news’ and ‘comment’ all require consideration in the context of the new media forms which frame these reconfigurations” (Goode, 2009).
So is professional journalism threatened by citizen journalism? Production and consumption methods have changed, and professional journalists must incorporate the methods of citizen journalism into their own practices in order to reach wider audiences. However, the major difference between the two is that citizen journalism is and always will be ‘comment’, as opposed to ‘news’. Rather, Goode places importance on researching the relationship between consumer and producer, which will equip professional journalists with the necessary tools to tackle the changing media landscape, in order to “be comfortable with change and flow as the day to day conditions of knowledge production and dissemination, and recognising that all of this may change, and appear differently in six months.”
Professional journalism may evolve and move away from reporting breaking news, as sites such as Facebook and Twitter will continue to leech consumers. Professional journalists can maintain their place in society by continuing to act as mediator between government and its publics, perhaps favouring more in depth analysis of current political and social affairs, delivering news otherwise unattainable to the consumer from citizen journalism alone.
Intro | Rise of Citizen Journalism | Network Literacy and “Good Journalism” | References