Quantity over quality; a downfall of E-Journalism?

My brother (Jake) graduated from UOW in 2015 with a Bachelor of Journalism, and in the two years since receiving his degree he has had only had around 10 months of Part-time work (25 hours a week) as a contracted journalist.

Mind you he is a very articulate, educated and tech-savvy young man, and to know his University degree and ultimately his livelihood is being ‘undermined’ by platforms such as Twitter and the rise of citizen reporting is terrifying. 

Journalists and mainly mainstream media today is regularly portrayed as one-sided or bias news, with emphasis on stories to profit or thinning-out the truth to provide the highest attention/profit…

But is this the case with citizen-journalism too?

“Journalism’s role as watchdog and informant for the wider citizenry was appropriate at a time when most citizens were unable to seek out a broad range of information sources for themselves” – Dr Axel Bruns

We are still receiving one-sided perspectives; just more of them. So whats better? Quantity of opinion, or quality? Safety in numbers or confidence in knowledge?

I know I’d much prefer to hear from a professional/academic/professor over some amateur, but I understand where these opinions are necessary; to defuse or rebut fake-news and provide information directly to people on the street. We are in an age where information is power, and we have access to so much information. 

So has journalism and it’s role shifted even further away from value being placed on authorship?

Although, I’m still conflicted on this – I love that we have such widespread access to information and that we have the right and ability to engage, curate and aggregate with news, but maybe we need a culture shift in how traditional journalism is being viewed or even how it is being carried out… Or should my brother burn his degree and sign up for Twitter?

 

P.S. Sorry for long post; thanks Dad for Meme inspo.