The Accidental Journalist

If you haven’t already read Carol Midgley’s brilliant article in today’s Times, click here to have a look.

Midgley’s comment is a thoughtful critique of citizen journalism in its many guises, and why she - as a professional journalist – just isn’t so sure about the whole thing. I’ve blogged recently about the dangers (albeit comic) of taking the ‘citizen journalism’ pledge a bit too far, and Midgley hits the nail on the head. If we’re going to do citizen journalism, and do it well, we have to make sure the genre stays credible – and that means making sure it’s done properly. As Midgley says:

 … a lot of it just makes me want to have a lie down. Collating actual evidence seems a quaint notion to a certain type of participatory journalist. Those who shriek “we’re all hacks now!” are often the same people who couldn’t check a fact any more than I could perform a vasectomy reversal. As for objectivity, they couldn’t even spell it.

I know how this looks: bitter hack resents amateurs crashing party. Well, yes, perhaps. But we have taken the exams, done the shorthand, hung out drinking with halitotic detectives until our skin turned bad. Though we occupy a public standing somewhere between a wife-beating banker and a paedophilic estate agent and are frequently called shits, at least we’re qualified shits. We have to know libel law, prove stories, put our real names to them and, as I’ve said before, face a spanking from our in-house lawyers if we balls up.

That’s the problem citizen journalists face. We may have the drive, the ambition and even the skills – but, on paper, we’re lacking the official credentials it takes to get people to take us seriously as journalists. Rather than spend time comparing ourselves to the professionals, however, or worrying about what we lack as amateurs, we should turn this energy into something good – an effort to prove ourselves to the big wigs, and get back some of the respect citizen journalism deserves.