The debate over whether traditional news media outlets are being replaced by citizen journalism and blogs is long lived and in my opinion over hyped. Although user generated blogs are on the rise, I believe that they will not replace traditional information outlets.
Firstly, most bloggers simply comment and write pieces on stories that have already been circulated by traditional news media and produced by professional journalists. The citizen journalist generally relies on the news to break stories first and then relying on this creditable information the blogger begins publishing. Therefore without embedded professional journalists breaking news bloggers would not have the resources available to publish their own opinions.
This leads to my second point being that although citizen journalism facilitates new voices to be heard, these individual voices are often highly opinionated. Don’t get me wrong, I do not believe that traditional journalism is purely objective and wholly unbiased but I do believe that the credibility of their organizations provide them with an advantage over an isolated and unknown blogger.
As supported by the below research by PEW (2010), it is clear that citizen journalism never is and never was going to replace traditional news outlets. Aside from the hype generated by money hungry media conglomerates who were threatened by the idea of any one else profiting from the news but themselves, citizen journalism is in fact an asset to traditional news and I believe that once media outlets find a way to incorporate bloggers into their business models the two can exist in harmony.
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