Journalism takes work?

Can anyone be a journalist? Certainly anyone can communicate. Beyond that, with recent technological advances just about anyone can communicate to a broad audience. Given that the physical barriers to journalism have begun to come down, the real question asked here is: are journalists anything more than pundits talking to the public at large?
Clearly there are issues when newsmakers try to also be reporters. This isn’t generally journalism, no matter how objective it is, but is public relations. But what about the common citizenry? It’s one thing to exclude the people involved in the news from covering it, but a wholly different thing to say that the average person can’t cover it. In this sense, anyone probably can be a journalist. The problem is that just because someone can do something doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is going to put in the necessary work to do it right.
Earlier this week we discussed the concept of balancing access with integrity. During the discussion there were many bets hedged, because, despite everyone taking a black-or-white, yes-or-no stance, most of us know that ethical issues like deciding when and how to take information from sources are complex issues and need to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Anyone can do this. People make ethical decisions everyday. In journalism, like other professions, the new guy doesn’t get to make those decisions. Generally no one person makes those decisions. Editors with years of experience and an understanding of the ramifications news might have talk over these decisions and try to get a variety of opinions before going with any one course of action.
Of course there is also the argument that if everyone can be a journalist, and enough people do take up that mantle, then the sheer number of voices in the marketplace will offset such issues. While it does seem likely, if there were an essentially unlimited number of journalists covering topics, that things like integrity and access would naturally balance out as different people took different approaches, there are still the technical skills required in the trade. Gillmor talks at length about the benefits of turning to our readers, because they are simply better informed in a lot of circumstances. But what about highly technical matters? Seasoned legal and business reporters are good because they’ve spent years learning the ropes and can offer insightful analysis. The other people that the public could turn to for news from this area generally can’t provide it to them. Generally, people informed enough in these complex issues are informed because it’s their job to be. The either are covering them or making the news here. Beyond the issues of maintaining neutrality, business and the law also have special regulations that regulate the flow of information and render many of the people in the know unable to actually share that knowledge.
It is also important to consider the market place of ideas and how it functions to support a democratic state. It is possible that the amount of information publicly available could become functionally limitless. At some point, there could be enough information on any given topic that it would be impossible for any one person to synthesize or process it all. That’s not journalism. Journalism is deciding what information is relevant and deserves to be prominent and what, unfortunately, might have to slip between the cracks. It is also trying to do the best job possible of exploring that information and conveying it to the public. If there is an unlimited amount of information of available, produced by people who simply enjoy writing about it and happen to be experts from their everyday experiences, the depth of coverage required to be a journalist becomes less valuable and the editing and decision-making skills become more important. In this way, bloggers are journalists. Linking to the facts and portraying them for people is a logical extension of letting quotes and facts speak for themselves—something most professional journalists would claim they try to do. The problem, currently, is that there is a limited number of information available, and even less credible information. That means it still takes work to find the facts and synthesize things together to provide context. When everyone is their own PR person, and all that information is more publicly available it will be far easier for people to put up lists of links or write about their days’ events to create real news coverage.
Yes, anyone can be a journalist. It’s not even necessary to have a fancy journalism degree to do it. What is necessary, however, is taking time to balance ethical issues, hopefully involving other people in that decision-making process, and properly immersing oneself in the subject matter that is going to be covered. It is also helpful to pick up skills in areas such as news judgment, editing and visual presentation—but even professional journalists demonstrate how these things can be of varying importance depending on who the audience is and who the speaker is. So, yes, anyone can be a journalist, but it does take a certain amount of time and work.