Do you think Bloggers, Twitter links & TMZ are replacing Journalists?

[PoliticalPizza]

"The truth may set you free" - but when the News is free to read
- do you eventually kill the truth?

It has been the Press that has taken us from being storytellers to
historians and put random events in context with thought provoking
deeper meanings.

A free and vibrant press and an army of journalists have proven
to be a far more powerful force for freedom than any shot fired or
battlefield won!

But in an age where we get informed by a free link on Twitter or an
inquiry on Google Search - are we still willing to pay for the "Times" and
the "Newsweeks" of the world to educate us? Or, are we willing to risk
paying a much higher price?

The transition of the iconic image of the Newspaper delivery boy being
replaced by a news icon on an Ipad, has threatened the art of journalism
in a way that Richard Nixon couldn't have imagined when "All The President's
Men" were undone by the Press during Watergate or what China does today
with their failed and incessant censorship.

Who would have thought the best way to silence the Press is by having everyone
else's voices be heard.

Original article posted: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/07/1177111/-A-Free-Press-is-Harming-America?

http://www.politicalpizza.net/2013/01/peace-with-honor-again.html]

[Warpy]

1. They've certainly replaced the editorial pages

More and more, the only thing worth looking at there is the editorial cartoon. More and more, the pages are choked with right wing hack columnists and the occasional stodgy, please the right wing conglomerate that owns the paper, column by the actual editors, most of whom are likely choking on every unchallenging word they write.

The world of opinion has certainly shifted to the web and that's not a bad thing.

There is still a partnership between the web and the broadcast news room and AP staff for rapidly breaking news. The web repeats whatever the rumor mill comes up with and the mainline news rooms fact check what they can and put what passes the process into an actual story. The local paper also remains the best place to pick up local news.

I see the web as having opened a few things up to people who were closed off for so long, even if those people are just retweeting wild rumors. Many more of them have done actual reporting, an example being the people covering OWS, something that was ignored by most mainstream news sources until the cops moved in (and then underreported).

[Skittles]

2. could explain some of the dumbing down of America

[bemildred]

3. We are seeing the end of journalism as an employed professional caste.

What is left is mostly newsreaders, not journalists. But this is not the end of journalism, people still need and want news, it's just more of an open field of competition for attention, TV news is failing, or morphing into infotainment like MSNBC is doing now.