Bret Levinson

Convergence

10/13/15

Post 2

                                                Regular People Doing Professional Jobs

           

Mass amateurization is the new capabilities that new forms of media have given to non-professionals to spread news, bring up issues, or to simply gossip about celebrities, athletes, etc. For the past 50 years at least, people have gotten their news from newspapers, magazines, TV, or their favorite radio station. Now you don’t need to go out and buy the paper, you don’t need to listen to annoying commercials to gain the weather forecast so you know what to wear. It’s all in your fingertips now with a cell phone. Not only are people at big news stations and people at big newspapers relaying information for people to read and gain knowledge, but also amateurs are posting the same exact stuff online to blogs, their twitter accounts and more social media apps. Now people in big news organizations have competition because now people don’t have to buy their publication in order to read what’s going on in today’s world. For example, former Louisville team escort recently came out and wrote a book explaining in details the horrible incidents that went down when she was working for the basketball team for several years. The fact that these recruits that would stay weekends but get “special escorts” aka the women who broke the story would get girls to perform sexual acts for these recruits so they chose Louisville to play basketball for. You didn’t need to go on ESPN.com or turn on sportscenter, or even read about it the next day in every sports section in America. People were blogging about it the second she came out and explained the story. People were tweeting about it non-stop when the story dropped. Amateur people not working for a big publication are now competing with big news organizations in relaying information, which can potentially ruin news corps around the world.

            Shirky explains throughout the chapter “ Everyone is a media outlet” that professional journalist are now having a tough time “gatekeeping” information. Meaning that before all of these amateurs were posting news stories on blogs, twitter, etc., paid journalist would chose what was newsworthy or not newsworthy. Now that these amateurs are flourishing and the professionals now have to second-guess in order to get first dibs on the issue or story.  Shirky also explains throughout the chapter that professionals never thought that this amateurization would ever affect these professionals but they are slowly but surely taking over.

            With all of these media tools such as twitter, blogger, and others regular people are now finding ways to publish stories. Shirky argues that not only are these “ regular people” or as better terms non professional journalists writing about the same stuff paid journalists are writing about, but that journalistic privileges are now becoming a loophole because of so many people committing the acts of journalism through different tools rather then working for a publication. “ If anyone can be a publisher, then anyone can be a journalist. And if anyone can be a journalist, then journalistic privilege suddenly becomes a loophole too large to be borne by society. Journalistic privilege has to be applied to a minority of people, in order to preserve the laws ability to uncover and prosecute wrong doing while allowing a safety valve for investigative reporting”(Shirky 71). Shirky is arguing the fact that now so many amateurs are out there doing a journalist job that when do we cut off someone who is a journalist but not working for a specific news organization. Times have changed, according to Shirky a scribe use to be a talent back in the ancient times. Someone who wrote was smart and intellectual. It was something that was revered, but now everyone seems to be a so-called scribe due to the mass amount of blogs and Internet tools to convey your information to the world.

A picture describing Shirky's thoughts

            A professor that works for the Star Ledger explained to me that they work on a click base method now. Meaning, journalist now are suppose to get more clicks on their articles in order to essentially keep their positions. Therefore journalism is now becoming watered down with so called “cat videos” in order to keep the viewer amused and to keep your clicks high. That is a serious affect that media publishing and consumption has resulted in. Do journalist want to post non-newsworthy material or videos or pictures? Most prefer not to and prefer to post relevant news that the viewer should be interpreting, but now the role has changed because news organizations need viewers and clicks in order to make money and the news has shifted to pretty much tabloid and what will get the most number of clicks.

            Fan fiction is something that convergence has pretty much created. Amateurization turned a girl Heather free to create her own world within the Internet. Many people started writing and adding on information that Harry Potters author never put in the story. The author Heather was able to do this and start this project up because the way media has evolved overtime. People can now join forcers and create their own add ons to stories they find interesting. Is that good or bad? “ Literacy is understood to include not simply what we can do with printed matter but also what we can do with media”(Jenkins 176). I believe Jenkins is trying to say that the media and all the media tools we can use today has struck up a new kind of amateurization, a kind that lets the creator run with what he or she wants to and that catches the eye of others interested.

            The future of the media professional looks like a computer online basis. I don’t believe that newspapers will last much longer as the New York Post has already cut many writers because of the lack of money they are making. Moreover, I believe that there will be more updating online stories sort of like it is today. People having to change the story and update it every half hour because the story changes. I believe twitter will stay on a trend of having many people working for news organizations tweeting quick 120 character tweets in order to inform the public rather then a 40-year-old mom tweeting from her pool in Florida to relay information.

            Journalism has shifted tremendously since the beginning of time when it first started. The shift is taking a scary turn in today’s day though. An occupation that required watchdog skills, as well as good reporting has turned into an occupation that is focusing on things that catch people’s eyes and make money. Moreover, mass amateurization has caused many news originations to start changing their gatekeeping stories to more stories that regular people cover in their blogs. The two readings suggest a different time in the media, a time that maybe we as young journalist should be trying to fix instead of trying to conform.

mass amateurization applications

1. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where old and New Media Collide, New York: New York UP, 2006. Print.

2. Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organization. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print.

3. http://media180sm2011.blogspot.com/2011/08/shirky-mass-amateurization.html