FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Imagine a world without professional reporters

Imagine a world without professional reporters

People are getting better at analysing news on social media, but there's an inherent danger in offering everything for free

Under threat for years from fast-developing technology, and especially the social media, journalists are by now fully recognised as an endangered species. A recent, much-discussed analysis merely confirmed what most people already knew – that reporters rank little better than mailmen or meter-readers in terms of job security. 
Only one question remains, it appears, and it isn’t how journalists might adjust to their altered circumstances. 
The question is whether the world can live without journalism as we know it today.
Print journalism has been identified as being among 10 careers threatened with extinction. The good news is that its practitioners always have “a way out”, thanks to their professional adaptability. 
The same analysis mentioned above also points out that, although news-reporting as a career has lost its allure, the people already pursuing that career can easily make the leap into marketing, advertising and public relations. There is the option of migrating into digital journalism as well, albeit on the understanding that this relatively new field is flooded with eager candidates.
To summarise the predicament, fewer and fewer people are buying newspapers these days. Free online news content is readily found and being consumed in phenomenal gulps, leaving its providers with only one problem – outdoing rivals in enticing advertising sponsors. 
Meanwhile robots are writing many of the news reports appearing online. The algorhythmic technology is still in its infancy, but it will get better. And the social networks are no longer just forwarding or sharing information but creating their own news content. They still have a lot to learn about journalistic ethics, but, like the robots, they’re bound to improve.
“The news will find you” has been the catchphrase in recent years. The social media have a distinct advantage over conventional news outlets in that, not only do they swiftly spread breaking news, they offer background knowledge. 
It’s rough around the edges, to be sure, and all too often downright false, but this immediate, at-your-fingertips access to both the facts and the analysis poses one of the greatest challenges to the relevance of mainstream journalism.
Journalists continue to survive mainly because the social media haven’t fully matured, but, again, that’s just a matter of time. 
The online networks’ users have learned to compare notes, double-check facts and do background research of their own. Professional journalists cling to relevancy as something akin to a “last line of defence”: If they print it, an online story’s authenticity is confirmed.
Those who report the news online are prevented from assuming the professional’s mantle only because they lack access to certain places and situations and the incentive of income that supports an ethical reporting career.
The online incarnation can overcome first the obstacle by invoking freedom of information to get through to high-placed political sources, business leaders and other authoritative figures who can tell them about big crimes, big development projects and big policy shifts. 
When journalism ceases to be a viable career and all the reporters are gone, it’s these sources that will have to readjust.
The second obstacle – being paid to report – raises a trickier proposition. Without paid journalists, who can we really trust to be objective and ethical? There will always be people willing to report, forward and share, but not day in and day out, simply because it doesn’t pay.
The problem with professional journalism is that it’s paying less because the younger generation is used to getting what it needs for free. The Internet gives them the news. This is forcing journalists to adapt to survive, but the time might soon come when the average citizen has to do all the reporting himself.
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