Mass Amateurization: Digital Age & Newsprint is disappearing!

    In Clay Shirky's "Everyone is a Media Outlet" he describes mass amatuerization as the process by which everyday citizens are able to crossover into the platform of professionalism because of the advances in mass media. The specialized skills that were once needed to become a professional are no longer needed because non- professionals have been given access through the internet to perform in a similar way that a journalist would. Shirky writes, "The individual weblogs are not merely alternate sites of publishing itself, in the sense of publishers as a minority and professional class." (Shirky 66) Before it would be hard to get published or to have recognition from others but now it is so much easier. Now that non professionals can publish whatever they want they aren't binded to an ethical code as a journalist would be.

  Shirky does believe that citizen journalists are important to have in society and that has been proven through  the magnitude of awareness that has been gained since the recent killings in Syria. Here is a video of a day in the life of a citizen journalist in Syria. Through social media these citizen journalists were able to notify people in other countries about what they were faced with everyday. The problem with citizen journalists is because they can publish whatever they want it will be up to journalists to filter it afterwards as  Shirky describes in Publish then Filter. Shirky explains, "Now that our communications technology is changing, the distinctions among those patterns of communication are evaporating; What was once a sharp break between two styles of communication is becoming a smooth transition." (Shirky 87)

*Image from bbc.co.uk of Syrian Activists

 
 Shirky describes how important it is to journalists to be recognized by other people in the journalism profession and argues that the digital world has robbed newspapers of their businesses.  Journalist have an obligation to get information out to the public, but if every one is publishing and isn't held to the same standard as a journalist there wont be any fact checking. That could cause serious problems if there is an abundance of false information floating around on the web. Publishing these days is practically free so it easy for someone to post false information because no one is really held accountable.

In Jenkins' "Why Heather Can Write" Heather created her own blog that was a spin off of the Harry Potter series. Within this blog she created a newspaper called "The Daily Prophet" that allowed other students in her class to contribute their own imaginative stories. Fan fiction culture allows students from different ethnic,cultural, and national backgrounds to be able to all work together. Jenkins explains that "a decade ago, published fan fiction came mostly from women in their twenties, thirties and beyond. Today these older writers have been joined by a generation of new contributors who found fan fiction surfing the internet and decided to see what they could produce." (Jenkins 186) There will be a lot of competition in the near future.

   The printing press has been around for five centuries.There is also a constant struggle with different media outlets and now professionals vs non professionals because everything is so easily accessible. Citizen journalists may eventually begin to work with professional journalists almost in the same way that cops send in people undercover.The Economist on Youtube has created a video explaining how citizen journalism has changed the news world. I also feel as though all print journalism will be published online in the future. It will be harder to weed out what information is accurate or not but I also think that online publications are going to have to rely on their reputations. These two readings suggest that  the citizen and professional journalist dynamic has changed and it will continue to change in the future. Hopefully one day we will all be able to come together to critique the false information that is being published in the internet. 
** Cartoon by cagletoons.com

Bibliography

Jenkins, Henry. (2007). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media 
                   Collide. New York: New York University Press.

Shirky, Clay. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: Everyone is a Media Outlet.  

                    New York: The Penguin Press.

Shirky, Clay. "Publish, Then Filter." Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together. London: Penguin, 2009. N. pag. Print.