Is Journalism pass it's time?

Sibusiso Banda

Technology has not only made life a lot easier but it has also brought a lot of problems especially in the journalism profession.What we call "eye witness reporting" or citizen journalism has taken the news industry by storm resulting in journalists now fearing for their jobs.

With this kind of journalism, an ordinary person with a simple gadget like a phone is can be a news reporter. They can record, take pictures and also give their "unmediated" version of the events and send it themselves to various news agencies. This has caused various reactions in the industry.

Many journalist spend years and years in institutions harnessing their skill of reporting and now it seems as if all that academic effort was for nothing. They feel that this so called “gadget” reporting is taking bread from their mouths as it could mean that they is gradually starting to become a “no need for them” as people are now able to tell their stories themselves.

 

This will be placing a high risk of making public the wrong version of live history as the people who are will be reporting through lack of experience and training runs a great risk of ill-informing the public. With so much power of informing the public it proper training is needed.

The above view is not widely held. They are those who see this gadget phenomenon as no threat but a grounding force that can motivate journalist to maintain and setting high standards in their reportage. Competition is good and journalists should know that with it can motivate professional to excel. I for one support this view.

I feel that instead of moaning, this is an opportunity for news to be covered. News can happen anywhere and anytime. There are instances where a journalist is unavailable to cover every certain events because of distance, time constrains or even in potical situation where the media is not "allowed" to report in certain events.

People will not only be alerting news agencies about what is happening but they will also play a contributing role in news gathering as will be creating a news pool for news agencies to select from and in this case, instead of news agencies not be taking news from other big agencies.

There will be various records and views on various news stories, enough to provide sufficient verifying of news in the later stage. With this regard, people will also be empowered to be “media’s watch dogs” through monitoring reportage.

With citizen journalism news reports will be available from every corner of the country. This will help news agencies to perfectly tell people’s stories effectively; even at a community level this will enhance its reporting. More people will be encouraged to share in the mother culture of storytelling.

Despite the raised complains, if you look at the bright side this in the end will be beneficial to future generation as it will also be solving Africa’s great problem of the lack of written story telling records.