There's a small firefight going on in the comments section on Poynter's e-Media tidbits column about whether citizen's journalism can be a replacement for professional journalism. This stems from comments recently made by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales that citizen journalists (I hate that term!) don't provide the same "work-horse reporting" as pros, and that they're inherently biased.
The problem with this argument—and its cousin, "Will blogs replace traditional journalism?"—is that it's not in any way an either-or choice. Nobody is proposing that professional journalism be replaced by user-generated content or blogs. They're entirely complementary to each other.
Yes, there will be news stories (and opinions) that will be created by members of the audience, for blogs, independent grassroots sites and forward-thinking newspapers. But there will always be professional journalists covering important events, doing investigative journalism and asking hard questions.
In these perilous and scary times of declining circulation, newsroom cutbacks and upstart competitors, it's understandable that professional journalists are concerned about being replaced. But user-generated content is never going to replace good journalism. There's plenty of room for them to co-exist very happily.
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