[Cthulhu_]

Bloggers can one-up journalists though - there's been a number of critical blog posts and articles from (former) employees at Uber, Google, etc, which eventually cost CEO's their jobs. Actually working and living the life is even better than being a journalist and having to dive into it.

[jdietrich]

Your examples kind of undermine your point. Disgruntled Uber and Google employees have the writing skills to make their point, they have the technical savvy and the social capital to get their message to a wide audience, they have the confidence and financial resources to resist legal bullying.

In a world without professional journalists, there's no-one to speak out for the poor and marginalised, no-one to unearth stories that are being kept well-hidden by unscrupulous people, no-one to do the months of digging and fact-checking that are involved in a major investigation. Journalism is a highly skilled craft that plays a vital role in society; we can't afford to delegate it to amateurs.

[andrewl]

I agree. A number of bloggers have definitely made contributions.

I'd be curious to know if the majority of people writing to expose abuses in their own companies are in white collar companies or companies like the bakery described in the Toronto Star. I would predict that more are in white collar companies, as they are more likely to already be aware of how to get content up on the web. Certainly employees of Uber or Google are. But I'm not aware of any research on this, so my prediction isn't backed by anything substantial.

Still, I think of people like the temp employees at this bakery as being more toward the voiceless end of the continuum, and more in need of a muckraking reporter.