Claire Biddiscombe is a fourth-year journalism student. She thinks the recent downfall of media organizations is a threat to democracy ( Photo Provided )
Would you let a kid from a high school wood shop class build your house?
No. That’s a stupid idea.
Journeyman carpenters spend years in college and as an apprentice learning how to do the job properly. They have the tools they need to do the job and a set of standards that their work must adhere to. Above all, they have a reputation to uphold – they have to remain accountable to their colleagues and customers.
But what if it got harder and harder for licensed and trained carpenters to find work?
Carpenters these days! Imagine wanting to be paid for specialized knowledge and experience? Especially when the kid down the street can bang together something with some nails and a band saw, is available whenever you need him and will do it for the price of a swim in your new pool.
This sounds like a great deal.
Until the day your house starts to list to one side. And you notice the floor isn’t even. And you get really tired of living in a four-walled empty box.
All of a sudden, you wish you hadn’t compromised on quality. Don’t you?
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its last print edition on St. Patrick’s Day, the second major American newspaper to stop the presses this calendar year.
Yep. It’s still March.
The Post-Intelligencer is now available online only – the latest casualty of a paper-free world.
Will it survive? No one knows really. These are uncharted waters for the media industry.
And if it goes? Some people will notice, and miss it. Some will notice and not care. Some won’t notice.
My message to these people is: Wake, the fuck, up.
This is bad news, not just for the thousands of journalists whose livelihood rests in traditional media, but also for every single consumer of information out there. And some people don’t understand this.
Journalists are like carpenters.
These days, many of the professionals have had some kind of training in a specialized journalism school, learning the craft from experienced instructors.
They know how to use such tools as interviews and access-to-information requests to shape their raw material – information – into a product that is both useful and usable to the consumer.
They’re bound by codes of ethics. Most media organizations have one, including the Charlatan. These “codes” are a set of guidelines laid out to ensure that the consumer gets the best quality product possible, as free from bias and conflict of interest as a human product can be.
And, crucially, they have reputations to uphold. Their names come attached to each story they produce, a sign that they are willing to stake their professional credibility on every piece of work.
Without professionals like these, information suffers.
One of the roles of the journalist is to hold the powerful accountable for their actions – a task that is much easier when said journalist has a steady paycheque to keep a roof over their head while working on a major story and isn’t hamstrung by the professional and social connections that may afflict so-called “citizen journalists.”
Don’t get me wrong. Blogs and sites like Orato certainly have their place.
But where are the blogs getting their information? Are the bloggers going to sit through hours of city council and committee meetings? Sift through data until they find the numbers that tell them how much your taxes are actually going up this year? Wade through federal red tape and wait months to get documents that no one else has?
Citizen journalism works, in theory, until it comes to the things you need to know, rather than the things you just want to know.
They have professionals to handle that. Underpaid, overworked, much-maligned professionals who take immense pride in their work and whose job security lessens constantly.
This is why you should care next time you hear about local TV stations cutting journalist jobs or national newspapers instituting mandatory time off without pay.
Because democracy is built on information.
And if the foundation is shaky, it’s only a matter of time before the house falls down.