The 21st Century marked a new era for journalism. Traditionally, journalism has been produced through newspapers, radio broadcast, magazines and other various established forms of journalism. Journalists create content and disseminate their messages through mass media in the form of print and broadcast- both radio and television. But the advent of the internet is quickly changing the status-quo. Nearly every major newspaper in the country now has an online version of their daily print news. The same can be said for most major broadcast news organizations such as NBC, FOX, CNN, etc.
Blogs and other forms of social media have also begun to change the landscape of journalism. But just because an individual has an opinion and a keyboard at their disposal does not make that person a writer or a journalist for that matter. Essentially, this is the world we currently live in. With the advent of social media nearly every person in the world has an opportunity to voice their opinion whether it’s intelligent or not. However, this doesn’t necessarily create a cesspool of stupid known as the internet population as Andrew Keen suggests.
Andrew Keen is the author of “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy.” Keen suggests that the Internet has created a population of amateur individuals which will ultimately kill professional journalism. He also believes that experts will most certainly become a phenomena of the past creating an uneducated public turning to thousands of amateurs for news and insight. But a person doesn’t necessarily need to be an expert to share knowledge or perspective on a specific issue. That is the whole point of blogging. Blogs allow people to voice an opinion to a large audience who might not have the chance to do so otherwise. It’s also important to note that many people do not turn to blogs for their main source of information. Matt Taibbi is a political writer for Rolling Stone magazine. I read his feature stories in print and his blog online. However, I do not turn to either as a source of news. I read them for entertainment and to see a different perspective on various political issues.
In reality I believe Keen’s criticism comes from a fear of change. It is likely that in the future news and other forms of journalism will cease to exist in print form. News will be produced and distributed via broadcast and the Internet. But news organizations will not fade away into the rubble. Many news organizations, as previously suggested, have begun to embrace the internet and create content for online use. There will always be a need to for professional journalists. The avenue they use to convey their message may change but the message is still valuable creating a need for well-polished journalists.
I would also suggest that while the Internet is full of poorly written blogs created by unintelligent individuals with worthless opinions there is an equal number of blogs written by well-educated journalists with valuable opinions. Intelligence will always reign supreme in the world we currently exist. I believe it is our job as a general public to be able to sift through the garbage to find quality opinions expressed in an intelligent way. That isn’t always easy given the fact that such a large amount of information is thrown at us at such a rapid pace. But we will adapt. It’s human nature to acclimate to an ever-changing environment. I also believe that well-written works will standout against those that carry little value. Generally, the public convey some resemblance of intellect and they have the ability to decipher intelligent content versus that which is lacking.
In one of the book reviews, author Kevin Keohane suggests that people have what he calls a “critical faculty” meaning we have the ability to think critically about the information we receive and the source of content. It is this ability that allows humans to filter through lousy content to find intelligent well-crafted information.
I would also like to make a point that Keen’s criticisms are ironic given the fact that he is an entrepreneur. Keen suggests that there are thousands of amateurs on the Internet without any experts. However, an entrepreneur is not necessarily an expert on anything. Entrepreneurship is based solely on risk and innovation. He is basically an amateur insulting other amateurs. It’s hypocrisy at its finest.
These misconceptions held by Keen and other individuals have led to the belief that journalism is dead. But this is false. Journalism is still thriving it’s merely evolving and those who want to be a part of it must adapt or succumb to the death that is slowly taking place in the print industry.
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