Citizen Journalism and the Future of Journalism, Kris Hoyt

With the rise of the internet, several people have attempted to spread the news themselves. This "citizen journalism" has led to a fair amount of controversy from several sources, including professional journalists. There are some people who believe that the citizen journalists are a boon to society, while others believe that the journalism should belong to professional journalists. In my opinion, this is not an easy distinction to make.

On the one hand, there are plenty of talented people out there who know how to get the story and can turn it into something well written. Rupert Murdoch said that people will pay for their news if the news is still well-written. However, as stated previously, there are people who can provide the well-written news for free. When that becomes the case, which one is more likely to be accepted by the people: the news they have to pay for, or the news that comes for free?

However, one can not ignore the need for professional journalism either. While there are some very good citizen journalists out there, at the same time, there are probably many journalists who do not realize what professionalism entails. As a result, they make simple mistakes or do not make an attempt to tell the full story, either unknowingly or knowingly. This potential for bias is another problem with citizen journalism. Professional journalism also has the same potential, but, hopefully, before any article is published either in print or online, it will be subjected to an editor who will find any bias and have it taken out.

I would also like to refute Ariana Huffington's comment. It appeared to me that she was accusing the professional journalism industry of turning its back on new media. However, many professional newspapers do use the internet and are slowly learning to use it in a more professional manner. Already, the active participation she talks about is used by most of these sources, by allowing comments to let readers discuss and debate the article, and pointing out extra sources allows the readers to get more research. I think that as the professional world gets more adept at online reporting, the professional journalism world will continue to outshine those citizen journalists.