It seems as though “journalist” has been a term assigned to those who follow the ethics and practices of research and verification. Of course, many people who are paid to do “journalism” in that sense of the word fail quite spectacularly. As long as the fundamental necessities of valid, accurate reporting are upheld, I think any person – paid or unpaid – can provide really valuable accounts of what happens in the world.

John: it’s interesting how projects like Wikipedia fall under the scope of your last comment. These new forms of publishing come with their own sets of benefits and drawbacks.

The duty of honest research and verification falls to all writers and to all journalists. Not everyone meets the standards to which we should aspire, and shortcomings are found alike among those who are on the payrolls of newspapers and magazines and with those who are not. These duties are enforced, in our world, by criticism and by the marketplace, not by profession. If a doctor or a lawyer betrays the canon of the profession, they are expelled from the profession by panels of doctors and lawyers; control of admittance to and the practice of a profession is one of the defining properties of a profession. A newspaper reporter remains a journalist as long as Mr. Murdoch continues to pay her salary.

Objectivity and impartiality are complex and often contested commodities in journalism. Was H. L. Mencken “impartial”? Drew Pearson? Walter Lippman? Hunter Thompson? My mother was a newspaperwoman; when Mr. Hearst was signing her paycheck, just what did objectivity mean?

I will try and get in touch with him to see if he will weigh in on this.

As far as the ease of hitting publish, I’m the first to admit that 99.99% of what’s written on the web is garbage. The challenge is getting the good stuff, and the great thing is that now more than ever of it can be first person accounts and video with is less likely to be biased or distorted than second hand (or worse) content.

The video you mention is an interesting view, but it’s trying to force the old media perspective on the new reality – if we’ve seen anything so far it’s that media will continue to fragment, not be assembled into a single monolith of information.

This does make me think more about a real problem with investigative reporting though. In a lot of ways journalists are like musicians – the technology infrastructure has made it possible to move their content at zero cost, devaluing it completely. How will organizations that do the research continue to be funded? Perhaps it’s still about advertising, which literally sponsors the news.

Not every Web “journalist” has that opportunity, though. The best journalists research the story and present the facts with as little bias as possible. Due partially to the ease of hitting “Publish” on WordPress, though, the tendency to verify is fading. Bloggers who are serious about their work should really take some time to study at least the very basic journalistic principles. (Note that I’m not making any judgments about today’s landscape of “professional” journalists; cable news pretty much wrecked that.)

There’s a fairly “old” (2004?) dystopian animation about the future of the news. I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s an interesting view:

http://mccd.udc.es/orihuela/epic/