[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.