But then the bloggers appear, writers of no training but natural talent, positioned by chance to see events and parts of the world which the news machines cannot reach. Fox never asks the question raised by his huge box of witnesses: were the professionals any better than the amateurs? The answer matters for the future as well as for the past. With the spread of digital technology, anyone can now be their own publisher. In these new circumstances, what defines journalism? What are journalists for? Many bloggers and operators in new media have already answered the question by declaring the “mainstream media” redundant. They predict that newspapers will close, deprived of advertising income and young readers, both migrating to the internet. The power of the separate priesthood of journalists, created because newspapers were capital-intensive businesses only a few could own and because governments wanted tame journalism, evaporates. “Citizen journalists”, enjoying instant peer-to-peer communication, storm the ramparts of the decaying old media regime. Was the age of the reporters just a passing final phase in Fox’s 2,500-year survey?
more from the TLS here.