Journalism can be described by the Marian Webster dictionary as the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media or the public press, an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium. A journalist is described as a writer or editor for a news medium and a writer who aims at a mass audience. These are the very basic definitions of journalism and what I had in mind when I decided that this is what I want to do with my life. I did not count ion encountering citizen or social journalism.
Citizen journalism is where the public plays an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing, and disseminating news and information and all these uses to be things that were done by qualified and professional journalists. That is no longer the case, while social journalism is where professional journalists or editors use content that has been collected by non-professional and refine it for mass distribution. These forms of journalism were not in my scope when I was planning out my life as a journalist however the more I learn about the challenges facing traditional journalists, the more geared up I am about the challenge.
As Dan Gilmor says in chapter 4 of his e-book MediaActive, the focus should not be on who is a journalist because that is no longer clear cut, the focus should be on what is journalism. As such I have shifted from wanting to be a journalist and my aim now is to be a practitioner of proper journalism. With citizen journalism, any person with a camera on their mobile phone can break a news story; this means a so called journalist will always be competing with anyone on the street to be the first to break the story unless somehow the internet no longer exists.
The impact of citizen journalism is compared to that of mainstream journalism here found that citizen journalism acts as a complement to mainstream media instead of a competitor to mainstream media.
The TEDx talk of Anita Li on youtube actually shows the journey of a young journalist who is of colour and describes how citizen journalism can be turned into a career that still allows you to produce reliable journalistic work in the 21st century . This also tells us more about the media being democratised.
All in all as a person that has always wanted to be a journalist, my goals may have shifted a bit but I believe the future of the media moving forward lies in citizen journalism and even if that means shifting away from traditional media establishments as long as the end goal is met to produce reliable news and tell the stories of those the mainstream media is not telling.
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