We need more professional journalists

My wife told me about a conversation she had with her friend who happens to be a pretty good journalist.  The friend was surprised about her daughter’s decision to study journalism, now that newspapers are dying and journalists are being laid off left and right. “She shouldn’t worry about it,” I said to my wife.  “The demise of the horse and buggy didn’t destroy transportation.”  In fact, we may need more professional journalists now than ever.

The current newspaper crisis has more to do with the way newspapers and media in general have been run than with the profession itself.  David Axelrod said in his speech to 1,300 journalism and other DePaul University graduates last month that he left the profession because “By the mid-1980s, journalism was becoming more business than calling. The front office began to take over the newsroom. The emphasis went from veracity to velocity, from reporting to receipts.”

Even before the Internet started attracting newspaper readers and television audiences, traditional media were already looking for intensive care. The Internet, a very different medium from the old media, began to redefine the journalism of yesterday, adding interactivity and (sometimes) intelligent conversation.  Journalism in the relatively early age of the Internet may very well be in an evolutionary phase, adjusting to the new medium.

A good example of these trends is the whole concept of “citizen journalism.”  The Huffington Post had the best coverage of the topic, on the day it announced “a cool new project” on YouTube,  “a one-stop-shop for people looking to learn how to report on what’s going on around them, offering over two dozen videos — ranging from how to capture breaking news on your cell phone to the ins and outs of journalistic ethics.”  I noticed that “reporting” and “journalism” were used interchangeably throughout the article.  Which begs this question: what is the difference between reporting and journalism?

Howard Bernstein, my former boss at the CTV Television Network, had a great post on his blog writing about the redundancy of the whole notion of  “investigative journalism,” quoting a former head of News and Current Affairs at the network: “…any high school student could identify the who, what, when and where of a news story, it was the journalist’s job to identify the why. Why is the real question that must be answered by any good news story no matter what the medium. That’s what we call journalism…investigation.”

While the whole concept of citizens’ reporting is invaluable, especially in countries where journalists are muzzled by repressive governments, we need professional journalists who can get answers to the why, who can put information into a wider context to help readers and viewers form an informed opinion.

For people working in the communication business, professional journalists in any medium are absolutely critical to communicating your corporate stories for this simple reason: even if your company is not doing great in these tough economic times, a professional journalist understands the context and can explain the environment better than somebody who can only report information, without the why.  That’s why we need professional journalists.