http://lubymk.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/how-to-be-a-journalist-without-a-degree/ brought to you by ims 201d_spring08 Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:44:27 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 http://lubymk.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/how-to-be-a-journalist-without-a-degree/#comment-19 bergermj Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:16:11 +0000 http://lubymk.wordpress.com/?p=9#comment-19 As a 2nd yr of the journalism program, citizen journalism makes me angry. The whole time in my journalism classes, our writing is molded and scraped into an almost indistinguishable form. We have to follow all these stupid conventions and I think it really hurts the news that we're trying to put forth. Citizen journalists can get around all of that. While working at another profession, they arguably do a better job with a webcam and a website than we do in our professional offices. Independent journalists don't have to follow the biases of the professional--in fact, though they have personal biases, these are transparent, making them more trustworthy. To make matters worse, news businesses are starting to play to the citizen journalists, paying them for their stories. I guess, I'm just jealous. By choosing journalism as a profession, I can't take the opportunity that web2.0 has created. I'm doomed to convention. As a 2nd yr of the journalism program, citizen journalism makes me angry. The whole time in my journalism classes, our writing is molded and scraped into an almost indistinguishable form. We have to follow all these stupid conventions and I think it really hurts the news that we’re trying to put forth. Citizen journalists can get around all of that. While working at another profession, they arguably do a better job with a webcam and a website than we do in our professional offices. Independent journalists don’t have to follow the biases of the professional–in fact, though they have personal biases, these are transparent, making them more trustworthy. To make matters worse, news businesses are starting to play to the citizen journalists, paying them for their stories. I guess, I’m just jealous. By choosing journalism as a profession, I can’t take the opportunity that web2.0 has created. I’m doomed to convention.

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