In Shrinky's chapter of the book Here Comes Everybody ,"everyone is a media outlet'' he points out a variety of flaws in today's media outlets. Such as the web , newspapers, magazine etc. He states "Control over the media is less completely in the hands of the professionals (Shrinky , 59) ." He is worried about how the world will be informed. He use to think newspaper was a good source but now he feels "mass amateurization" meaning that everyone can play journalist , has an influence of our delivery of news and other information, especially due to the web.
" Journalist privilege has to be applied to minority of people to preserve the laws. ( Shrinky , 71)". Not everyone should be able to post up material because , as Shrinky feels, it mixes in the the professional, the amaetur, and te straight up garbage all in one making it a little more difficult to pick out the valuable sources.Some blogger are in fact actually privileged journalist, however, can it be trusted with all the posers mixed in? Rebecca Mackinnon , was working at CNN and then started her own blogging deal (Shrinky 72) Nowadays there is a not a thin line , but a indistinguishable line( so it seems) between a blogger and a journalist. It's hard to filter.
My favorite part , or the part that stuck out to me the most was when shrinky stated "the future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from "why publish this" to "why not?'"(Shrinky, 71) I agree with this statement. Today, especially on the web there is a lot of trash, non worthy pieces of information wasting time and creating more ignorance than there already is. Almost anyone can be or at least pretend to be a journalist , publisher, editor, activist,anything. I see it as both positive and negative. It's negative because anyone can just say and post whatever without any type of factual back up , reviewing , or professional production. For example I use twitter as a media outlet. Twitter is not a news web whatsoever but I know a lot of people that substitute reading or watching the news for just going on twitter and seeing a trending topic.Twitter is a place where people bring all the masses into one place to share it with a large amount of people. For example I may here something on the news, I tweet about it, someone reads it and takes my word , then re-tweets it or spread the news along with their own opinion. That's bad because that is how people become misinformed. Some people do not go out there way at all to read any type of news , even on the web because they feel social networks are good enough , like someone watched the news for them. In my opinion I think its good that certain topics make it social media and sometimes interest people into watching or reading news. However it gets bad when you just rely on what others say.
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Mass amaeturization is not totally horrible. The same reason it's bad is the same reason it's great. Its usually fast, breaking news; Sometimes very raw and straight forward Unlike a professional the amateur does not have to censor or worry about pissing people off. Also,I think it's a way for people to put their input and to feel more involved and heard. I think it brings us more together as a culture and society. All sharing opinions where people from all over can see it and read it and make comments on it! It's actually pretty cool! Also I think it's cool if someone of importance were to take the time and to read and actually care about what I say on a certain matter. For example I would be the happiest person in the world in Obama was to ever re-tweet one of my tweets. (even though I doubt it's him someone on his team saw it!
In Henry Jenkins' "Why Heather Can Write" he gives his audience a common scenario that happens all over. This is the younger generations and how they get affected by Mass Amateurization which gives them the freedom to express themselves in their own ways which can have a positive impact with children and teenagers developing an interest in reading and writing. Due to the popular culture and trends these kids become more engaged or inspired in creating stories and publishing. Jenkins mentioned, "At first, they might only read stories, but the fan community provides many incitements for readers to cross that last threshold into composing and submitting their own stories (Jenkins 187)." Plainly, the internet is there to keep the interest of reading, writing and creating in the growing generation. Getting the young people , as young as 9 to show interest in reading and writing is definitely a plus for Mass Amateurization!
I think as consumers it is up to us to deal with the overwhelming amount of information being thrown at us. I think we are smart enough ( I hope) to figure out what is a trusted source and what is not. Some "news sources" are obvious that they have not so great credit-ability . If it seems shady stay away , simple as that. Some of it is only there for pure entertainment anyway. If we believe everything we read and take what Jane Doe has to say seriously that's our fault. Yes there are alot of options out there , but it's our job to filter that out, we cannot rely on them to do it for us and spoon feed what we read. What we as journalist can do is work with the amateur or use them to make what we do that much better. As far as the future goes , I think well be okay.
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