Citizen Journalism and the Future of Journalism, Jayme Hagen

While blogging and citizen journalism are not entirely without merit, one does have to question whether these sources are a legitimate form of news. They do not have editors or fact-checkers so it is crucial that consumers do not blindly believe the stories they write as hard facts. Often times these bloggers are anonymous and do not have to worry about their reputations. To generalize, when you aren't being paid to do a job, you aren't going to do as good a job at it, unless it truly is your passion, so these sources are generally of a lesser calibre. FTC news asks, "are newspapers like typewriters (i.e. dead) or bicycles (i.e. adaptable and vibrant)?" This is something that only time will tell, will the newspapers evolve with the changing of access to information, or will they fade into obscurity?

That being said, the Internet has allowed every person to have a voice on these matters. How they choose to use this voice is another matter. Before the Internet people relied mostly on local television networks and papers, now it is possible to read headlines from newspapers in Iran, you are able to read blogs from people all over the world. The quality may be inferior on many of the sources, but the sheer abundance allows readers to sift through and find accurate information, if they take the time to do so.

Ultimately, it is the consumer's responsibility to establish whether or not there is enough hard evidence in a story to believe it. This is nothing new, in order for people to establish whether what the papers were telling them was actually true, there has always been a need for skepticism. Nazi Germany had control of the presses, but the people who wanted the hard facts had to rely on underground forms of communication, if their had been as great of access to information (i.e. the Internet) back then, it would not have been as easy to keep everyone in the dark as to what is going on. At the end of the day, fact-checking has always been in the hands of the consumers, just because it comes from a newspaper and not a blogger does not mean we should blindly follow it.

Image courtesy of Kerussocharis.