The notorious ninth

So, we have come to the ninth posting just right after our mid-terms. Man, I really hope I fare well for the paper, it was hard, but it could be worse I guess. Just before the mid-terms we covered journalism and the internet, a topic which is really relevant to our field considering how we all are communication students. But whether com students or not, our lives are surrounded by journalism. As we make our way to work or school, we see newspapers being sold at every convenience store and read at almost every corner. Having said that however, it is not fresh news that traditional print and journalism is slowly getting out of business and that's not good news either.

We learnt in class that because of the internet, professional journalism is dying off because pro journalists are now not the only ones that have exclusive access to international news, and that the web encourages a shift in who creates, distributes own the news. Anyone close to where breaking news is occurring can take pictures or videos about it with a phone and simply blog about it online. During the incident where the white tigers in our zoo attacked a cleaner, videos of the attack were recorded and distrubuted by amatuers witnessing the mauling. Even our newpapers were publishing handphone-taken pictures of the attacks submitted by witnesses rather than sending a photojournalist to the scene (in which by then everything would have been over!).

Websites and blogs gives everyone that has an internet connection an equal chance of being online reporters. Such a drastic shift in power undoubtedly has its critics. With reference to the interview program video that we viewed in class, such freedom of speech has led to a widespread influx of wannabe-reporters jumping onto any story available and creating 'anarchy and chaos' in the process. To a certain extent, it is true that dodgy and bogus newswriting exist on the internet, but it is this phenomenon of not having a gatekeeper like an editor or producer to vet, approve or dismiss your work which makes citizen journalism so appealing to the masses.

Critics of citizen journalism can say all they want, but in my opinion, it is impossible to stop this wave. Just like the internet itself, citizen journalism is a socially natural phenomena. It is based on our human need to connect, to communicate and to discover. It doesn't have a starting point and it doesn't have an end point. It is a consequence of a generation of hungry communicators wanting to hear and be heard, and this present and future generations will have to learn through trial and error, to live with something that they have created. I believe this responsibility of ethical and truthful reporting/communicating is evident in most of us who blog and so long as we understand this, and understand that there are those who have yet to understand this, citizen journalism has a very bright future.