[zzalpha]

Alas, not to bring ageism into the discussion, but I'm gonna bet that probably just means you were born in, what, the late 90s or later?

Journalism serves a vital function. It's called the "fourth estate" for a reason, and should serve to enlighten the public on the goings on of the government and the world. Journalism is one of the forces counteracting government secrecy and surveillance. Hell, journalism is what brought the Snowden revelations to light to the general public.

To do that well, you need professional writers, researchers, and fact checkers. No, a casual blogger is not a journalist. Twitter is not journalism. Tumblr is not journalism. At best those are news. At worst, gossip.

Unfortunately, we now have an entire generation who doesn't understand what real journalism actually looks like. It's a damn shame... remember, journalism brought down Nixon and helped end the Vietnam war, among many other things. Real journalism can be immensely powerful as a medium.

It is not horseshoe manufacturing.

[VLM]

This is turning into a classic unrecognized theoretical vs practical argument. I propose:

"Journalism could, and historically did, serve a vital function."

Exactly like horseshoe manufacturing. Just not today.

There's space for us both to be correct, in theory journalism, much like western civilization, would be a great idea to try, or maybe we had it in the past, or it would be an interesting goal for the future even if it never existed in the past beyond a mythical ideal, etc. While at the same time, in practice, we can pretty much flush the existing stuff and not miss it. For some definition of "us", we have already decided to ignore it and are not missing it. Some of the percentage of the population stats are pretty dismal.

It IS possible to gain value by debating the "why". I think you're indirectly correct WRT age (although I am quite a bit older than your theory) in that rolling all of media (including journalism) into roughly five giant corporations did very little for the quality of the craft, and the fish rots from the head down.

[saint_fiasco]

>"Journalism could, and historically did, serve a vital function." Just not today.

I agree that journalism isn't serving that function today, but I think that function isn't being served well at all. Not enough cars, so to speak.

What can we do so that the next Snowden doesn't have to teach basic cryptography to some out of touch horseshoe makers?

[saint_fiasco]

Could twitter and random blogs have stopped Vietnam and Nixon too, if they had existed back then?

And if there is something unique to journalists that make them more proficient at stopping presidents and wars, why couldn't they stop the Iraq war?

Because the powers that be coopted that power. I read the "journalists" in the early 21st century and it was depressing.

Then again, the independent bloggers and twitters have also been rendered ineffective and powerless. Nothing much came from Occupy and the Arab Spring, fur example.

We need something different.

[zzalpha]

> Could twitter and random blogs have stopped Vietnam and Nixon too, if they had existed back then?

Go read about Watergate and get back to me (though, ironically, to do that you would need to read the works of investigative journalists...).

Today, the equivalent to Deep Throat might be Snowden, and that, too, required journalists like those from The Guardian to get the story out. That kind of journalism requires resources to research, travel, for legal costs associated with protecting sources, etc.

Regarding Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers would never have been published if the Times hadn't spent their own money going to court to defend their right to publish them.

So no, I don't believe twitter or random blogs have the power of the fourth estate.

> And if there is something unique to journalists that make them more proficient at stopping presidents and wars, why couldn't they stop the Iraq war?

That's a deeply complicated topic.

First, it's worth noting journalists never stopped Vietnam from starting. But as the war was waged, journalism played a role in turning public opinion against the war after it had started, thus hastening its end.

So, with that said, journalists actually played a very similar role vis a vis the Iraq war.

Now, I do believe they were less effective than in the past, but I actually believe that's exactly on point, here: that period is the same time when journalism began to struggle in the face of the ascendance of the Internet.

Which brings me right back to my very original point: Quality journalism is dying because no one will pay for content. And no one will pay for content because of the perceived low quality of journalism. Repeat ad nauseum.

Your mistake is in believing quality journalism never existed, but that's only because of your limited perspective, having only seen the medium as it began its slow decline.

[saint_fiasco]

Could the reduced effectiveness of journalism be because the government has journalists too?

I saw lots of journalists in favor of the war in Iraq. Were there many journalists in favor of war in Vietnam too?

I have only seen journalists as they were already declining, but we saw the decline of independent bloggers as it happened.

What happened to amateur Internet journalism was not a market failure. It was the government's realizing that the Internet is a force multiplier, and they have a lot of force to multiply. Cue astroturfing, surveillance and the 50 cent army...

Could something similar have happened to real journalism too?

[zzalpha]

I saw lots of journalists in favor of the war in Iraq. Were there many journalists in favor of war in Vietnam too?

Of course. And just like the Iraq war, the government used control of information (like trying to suppress publication of the Pentagon Papers) to attempt to maintain support among both journalists and the public.

Fortunately, with a strong journalistic community, combined with the constitution and the supreme court, the government lost. But it took time and significant resources.

Could something similar have happened to real journalism too?

Eh, journalism has always had to fight against the corrupting forces of propagandists. That's nothing new.

The difference is, a large news organization has the time and resources to fight that corruption, while a small time blogger does not.

Of course, where bloggers win is in the sheer distributed nature of their operation. That is, it's a very different thing to muzzle/corrupt a million bloggers versus a dozen newspapers.

So there are pros and cons to both models. But I think there are things traditional news sources can do that bloggers/etc simply can't. And the converse is also obviously true.