The Adaptation and Evolution of Professional Media

 The Adaptation and Evolution of Professional Media

In Everyone is a Media Outlet, media theorist Clay Shirky describes the development of mass amateurization and its effect on the way the world is exposed to the published word. This development, birthed by the Internet, has enabled the public to publish their own writing without the need to find funding to self-publish or receive a proper education in journalism to enter the workforce. This shift in the established status quo has caused professional journalists to change the way they approach and cover the news. Mass amateurization has broken the boundaries of who is capable of being a published journalist and has opened the ears of the world up to hear whoever wants to be heard.

With the advent of mass amateurization, the scope of what journalism is capable of covering has grown exponentially and aided in society’s need for more diverse journalistic voices. The professional journalist is educated and shares a common understanding and definition of what journalism is supposed to be with fellow professional journalists. This structure is important because it provides the reader with a promise that the news they receive is trustworthy and credible because (s)he is reading the work of an accredited “professional.” Yet the shared structure is also problematic because it only applies to commercial publications, but “society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable“ (Shirky, “Unthinkable”). Newspapers have always provided credibility to their reporting, but they also held a monopoly on published news. With amateur journalists now capable of publishing what they find to be newsworthy without the need of a newspaper, society’s desire for improved journalism can be attained. If the amateur journalist finds an event or story to be newsworthy then, chances are, there is an audience somewhere in the world that is also interested in what the amateur finds important, no matter how niche the subject might be. The professional journalist has always been limited by the question of “why publish this?” The amateur journalist is free to report on any story whether or not it fits the scope of what a newspaper would consider “fit to print.” This uneducated, yet sensible approach to journalism has forced the stubborn world of professional journalism to adopt the “why not publish this?” attitude of the amateur after years of denial.

NPR adopting the amateur blogging format.  

Professional journalism has been forced to adapt to this new journalistic ecosystem and incorporate amateur journalists and the way they communicate into its format. Weblogging has opened the door to who can be considered a journalist. Once, the definition of a journalist was “tied to ownership of communications machinery,” but now that the machinery is no longer required, “if anyone can be a publisher, then anyone can be a journalist” (Shirky, “Everyone” 71). Journalism is no longer a label exclusive to the professional and many professionally-trained journalists have discovered the newfound form of individual expression self-publication can provide. Shirky lists multiple journalists formerly employed at CNN who decided to leave the company to start their own blogs. These professional journalists, perhaps growing tired of the constrictive format and impersonal voices they must provide to please their editors at CNN, decided to embrace this amateur format to approach news in the ways they desired. Their motivation to express their unique voices, interests, and perspectives to the world displays the positive influence mass amateurization has had on even the educated, professional journalists of our time. This amateur-style approach to journalism has also affected the way professional news publications inform their audiences. NPR’s website now has a directory of 23 blogs all devoted to different subject matters ranging from arts and culture to gender and sexuality politics. This diverse approach to concentrate each blog on a niche subject allows the news station to delve deeper into stories related to these fields of study that would otherwise receive a much smaller amount of attention in their daily coverage.

Weblogging opened up a new way for amateur writers to communicate and inform one another in a collaborative effort to help each other and strengthen their individual written works. Before this free form of self-publishing, amateur writers would have had the near impossible task of finding like-minded amateurs to collaborate with. In Convergence Culture, writer Henry Jenkins describes the world of fan fiction in which amateur writers can help each other because “they are sustained by common endeavors that bridge across differences in age, class, race, gender, and education level” (186). This participatory culture Jenkins describes helps everyone learn from each other and adds a level of diverse opinions and critiques that otherwise would not exist for these amateur writers to receive. This participatory culture applies to the mass amateurization of journalism as well; such as the case of the Trent Lott story webloggers covered. Commenters were able to inform the blog writers, who covered the story, of Lott’s previous history of controversial remarks. This collective effort forced Lott to respond to the news and then allowed the professional news media to cover the story.

NY Times editor-approved amateur comments.

Mass amateurization has caused a shift in the way journalism is approached. The media professional has learned to adopt many useful ways of communication amateur journalists used to have their voices heard. Professional media outlets have adopted the blogging format into their websites. The New York Times website has a comments section on every article they publish that editors actually read through and stamp certain comments they find informative and intellectually important with a golden “New York Times Pick.” Professional journalists have learned that they have just as much to learn from the amateur as the amateur has to learn from them.

Works Cited:
Shirky, Clay. "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable." Web log post. Shirky.com. N.p., 13 Mar. 2009. Web. <http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/>. 

 Jenkins, Henry. "Why Heather Can Write." Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. 187. Print. 

  Shirky, Clay. "Everyone Is A Media Outlet." Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin, 2008. 71. Print.