“The job of the professional journalist is as dead as the elevator operator”. That’s the view of Michael Rosenblum, speaking a week or so ago at a conference on mobile journalism.

Here’s his central argument, which he reproduced in a Huffington Post blog...

Elevator operators were replaced by push buttons. Factory workers were replaced by robots. Bank tellers were replaced by ATM machines. Amazon has wiped out book shops and music stores.

Next comes journalism because there are 3bn people around the world with smart phones that are “remarkably powerful platforms for journalism”. People can write on them, snap pictures, shoot video and then upload it to the internet for free.

There is no barrier to being a journalist, says Rosenblum (among many others). “Anyone can do it”. And their content “fills Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Meerkat and so on”. He continues:

“We all like the idea of the driverless car. Except it is the end of the careers of truck drivers, taxi drivers, bus drivers and so on... The world’s biggest taxi company, Uber, (with a valuation of $30bn), does not own a single taxi. The world’s biggest hotelier, Airbnb does not own a single hotel room. In the not too distant future, the world’s biggest and most powerful news and media company will not employ a single journalist”.

So, said Rosenblum when addressing MojoCon in Dublin on 28 March, “the model is already here. All that is needed is someone who can put this all together. How hard could that be?”

Source: HuffPo (the site that doesn’t pay its writers)



Comment: We are, of course, headed in the direction indicated by Rosenblum. The question he does not ask, however, is whether it will be beneficial for journalism and, by extension, beneficial for the public.

More and more traditional news outlets are laying off staff journalists. They prefer to employ freelance reporters and photographers and to hire casual sub-editors. Many papers and magazines - not to mention TV and radio broadcasting outfits - are replete with people on work experience schemes. Lots of interns work for free or very little for long periods of time.

User generated copy, billed as some kind of journalistic virtue, is sought by the publishers of regional and local papers simply because it is free rather than because it is of real value.

As for professional freelance journalists, operating in what is clearly now a buyers’ market, their payments have diminished throughout this millennium.

The supposed virtue of a journalism of the people by the people for the people is nothing more than a way of publishers maximising profit. Media companies are using the technology as a way of reducing labour costs rather than as a way of democratising, and thereby enhancing, editorial content.



One freelance writer who emailed me last week put this in some perspective:

“It makes me laugh that so much is being made of ‘zero hours contracts’ in the media at the moment because I have been freelancing as a journalist for 25 years now and such a deal would be a step up! The rights of a freelance hack are basically zero. Look at what’s happening: the basic fees of reporters and feature writers are being cut while celebrity columnists’ pay soars. But don’t dare challenge it because you then face the possibility - call that a probability - of being blacklisted by paymasters who call the tune. It’s an inevitable consequence of employers abusing technological tools to get our work on the cheap. We are suffering simply because we want to be paid for our experience and skills for producing quality journalism”.

Filling up pages with pseudo journalism is, and always has been, easy. Look at the Daily and Sunday Express. They are put together by a handful of men and women with genuine journalistic skills who are required to produce papers with the thinnest of content. It can be done, but what’s the point of the exercise beyond profit? What does it do for the public?

A former student told me the other day that he works for a group where one man is editor of 17 local weekly titles. It can be done. It is being done. But where is the value in it?



This is not the collaborative journalism we sought, the citizen journalism that we have been so enthusiastic about since the dawn of the net. It is churnalism. It is the appearance of journalism, a bogus activity.

The problem with Rosenblum’s vision is not that he is wrong, but that it is not something to celebrate. Journalism is not equivalent to hiring a taxi or robotising a repetitive assembly line task or renting a holiday home. It is a creative activity that cherishes democracy by holding power to account.

That is a journalism which requires journalists who are properly rewarded for utilising skills on behalf of the societies in which they operate. Low pay (or no pay) will lead inevitably to fewer people of skill and talent entering our trade. If the job of the professional journalist really is dead, then so are we all because it means that democracy itself is under threat of extinction.