Interesting conclusion to a post about a story the traditional media failed to cover:
I would also point out one thing which I am sure will be missed by the "Old Media is indispensable" faction, which is that there is no need for any of these amateurs to ever do any journalism again. It is, in my view, very likely that they won't. It will be other amateurs who do and that is a key unappreciated strength of this thing, that each story can be done not by someone who gets assigned to go through the motions, but by a small set of people passionate about that particularly issue.Journalists had three things going for them in the traditional media age: time, skills and access to distribution.
We've lost two of those. In aggregate, the general public and bloggers in particular have more time available that all traditional journalists put together. And access to distribution is available to anyone with a computer or mobile phone and an internet connection.
So, what can we do with skill, where the other two aren't the defining factor?
Interesting as always, Adam. Not sure I agree about time, though. If a journalist is assigned to a story then they can spend all their time on it, knowing that they're being paid to do so and don't need to do a 9-5 to cover their normal outgoings. What we're in the midst of, due to the crisis the publishing business is in, is the time of journalists being squeezed by managements who want more work published more quickly by fewer people. A properly resourced journalist can still have more time to cover a story than anyone else - it's just that properly resourced journalists are becoming fewer and farther between.
Cheers,
AB