Modern Technology and the Traditional Hierarchy of Journalism

Week Three Seminar Report:

Blogs, Twitter and You.Tube. Relevant or rubbish?

Today, Melanie Abraham gave a seminar regarding the controversy surrounding the future of investigative journalism, and the factors that threaten to kill it. The predominant threat to professional journalism; citizen journalism.

Citizen Journalism, as defined by Ms Abrahams, involves ordinary individuals playing an active role in journalism.

In the University of Newcastle’s third year class, the predominant argument suggested that citizen journalism was less bias, more thorough and greatly expanding. Qualities that could possibly lead to the extinction of the professional reporter.

Ms Abrahams argued that modern technology supports citizen journalism, thanks to tools such as camera phones and networking sites. "These tools allow the average user to disseminate information to a wider audience," Ms Abrahams said.

Not only do sites such as YouTube or WikiNews encourage amateur journalists to contribute information, but television networks such as Seven and Nine are jumping on the bandwagon.

The mainstream news channels invite citizen journalists to submit photos or videos to their program, reported Ms Abrahams.

From the moment that Citizen Journalist ambassador Jay Rosen spear-headed the term, these 'reporters' have been first on the scene. Events such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, flooding of South East Asia and the Victorian Bush fires have been documented, in most cases initially, by citizen journalists.

However, with this type of praise comes backlash from the hierarchy of professional journalists who argue that the term ‘citizen journalist’ should never have been coined due to their lack of skills or qualifications.

Ms Abraham acknowledged that many traditional journalists opposed the amateur’s right to report, edit or disseminate information to the public. She suggested that this snobbery was evidence of intimidation by the growing trend.

She explained that ‘open source reporting’ allowed media companies to hire citizen journalists to collaborate with professional journalists. An example she used was the online news source Ohmynews.com who pays 38,000 citizen journalists to contribute to 70% of the content. With the support of both technological advances and commercial networks, the traditional hierarchy of journalism may need to worry.