The Death of the Journalist

The death of the author is old news but apparently it's someone else's turn to kick the bucket - the journalist's.

Amanda Powell, editor of BBC Wales News online, gave a talk at the school in which she touched on user-generated journalism, discussing the possibile redundancy of the journalist as blogs, picture-phones and comment-pages reign supreme.

This topic was uncomfortably familiar to me, having earlier discovered a debate on the Guardian blogspot about whether bloggers are, indeed, the new journalists.

Panic! Is my chosen profession soon to no longer be a viable profession at all?

According to one debater, it wasn't a profession in the first place. "You don't even need a qualification to become a journalist", after all.

Amanda noted the big part users play in bringing in sources for stories these days but was quite adamant that "the journalist will always have a role".

What worries me is that journalists are quite sure that journalists are skilled, inimitable individuals, yet they seem to be the only ones.

Are journalists just a bunch of deluded and self-righteous fools?

I find that hard to believe. A good journalist is skilled and has a range of resources at her finger-tips that Joe Blogger does not. Most of all, journalism must be a refined skill or else I wouldn't be finding it so hard to master!!

The poet rejected the grave and I believe the journalist will follow in his footsteps.

Blogging is one thing, journalism is another.