[JulianMorrison]

Do we even need professional reporters any more?

Given:

- People will do their own reporting on disasters, political upheavals, etc. In fact it can be nigh impossible to stop them, witness Iran.

- People comment and discuss for free. Hell, 99% of the traffic on the internet that isn't spam, piracy or porn is chitchat over opinions. Some people are even qualified to have an informed opinion. These can be aggregated.

- Investigative journalism costs, but it also sells (as books and magazines if not as newspapers)

- 99% of what ordinary reporters do every day is produce filler crap because you can't just print a blank paper with the headline "nothing happened". This is pumped out as news but it isn't news. It could vanish and it wouldn't be missed.

[Quarrelsome]

No, the argument is the difference in quality. Proper journos are better than just standard people, however how many "proper journos" do the papers employ anymore? Seems to me like a whole lot of em just look at Wikipedia and just regurgitate press releases which is no better than your average "joe public" reporter.