dispatches from Greek Weekend: day 3

caught in the moment
munching on  //  popcorn
eargasm  //  Superbad
mood  //  fabulous

Being a specialized profession has its perks.  Once one becomes a professional, they enter an “elitist” group that have gone through the same rigorous training.  This training forms a symbolic bond.  In the journalistic arena, one can see that the woman or man who has been in the business for a while, who went through numerous news writing courses, would feel undermined when an environmentally-conscientious & savvy high-school dropout breaks the news about an oil spill before they do.

The text by raises several interesting questions: “The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing & a switch from ‘Why publish this?‘ to ‘Why not?‘”.  The other two, I will answer below.  Not because I know what will occur but because I do have my own thoughts on these issues.

What happens when the costs of distribution & production go away?

Well, the writers & publishers will have extra money in the budget to peruse greater & more elaborate projects.  The money that usually goes to distribution and production can be used to fund the salaries of more reporters & staff, to open another news agency in a different country, or to pay a reporter’s room & board fee while they are covering a feature story about the cross-country highways being built in the Amazon Rain-forests of Brazil (for more information on that topic, see Sunday’s “Seattle Post-Intelligencer”).

Since the day I was accepted into the editorial journalism major, I have heard numerous professor’s & guest lecturers reveal that smaller papers go out of business or that stories are not covered because of a lack of funds.  Wouldn’t cutting out the middleman help the paper’s cause?

From another point of view, one could touch on the people that would be affected by the cutting of costs.  Numerous people work at these production and distribution centers, & to cut costs & perhaps close the plants down would lead to an increase in unemployment.  But I highly doubt the world will come to that.

What happens where there’s nothing unique about publishing anymore, because users can do it for themselves?

Everyone is different.  But if being different is also to be unique — isn’t everyone unique?  Like everything else in life, some people are going to be better & more talented than others in certain areas.  Not everyone will be able to write eloquently or be able to grab the reader’s attention with one well-written sentence.  Not everyone can make a good website or have the funds to hire someone to make that website.  I feel that everyone has their own individual talents.  If one chooses to write a piece about abortion, perhaps a whole new perspective will come into light because everyone has different experiences that shape who they are.  Someone who comments on the piece on their blog could add in their point of view.  This type of talking or online conversation is what helps our world grow.  Sure it may rock people’s concrete views but without this rocking no change would ever occur.  & keep in mind that journalists thrive on change.

Questions

1) What do you believe “the news” means in today’s context?

2) How will this ‘de-professionalism’ of journalism affect us as upcoming journalists?