We can’t assume that unpaid amateurs will take up the slack when they are also working at other jobs to pay the bills.

Sure, there are a lot of hack reporters that have been bolstered along by the inflated profits of publishers. But once those hacks have been fleeced out of the system, you still need to pay a core of professional journos who can spend the time to dig deep.

I’m leaving your comments up which note the error.

I don’t think it requires a need to cross out an extra E in the post above. Mostly for aesthetic purposes. It wasn’t a factual error.

This is my blog. It is my personal blog. As noted from the beginning this post came out of me rather quickly after having some bloggers block.

This blog is where I collect my thoughts. Where I wrote about my grandparents death, my friends, my life. This blog is not meant to be journalism. I never sell it as such.

I think you are looking for a fight. Worse than that – if we ever do meet in person I am serious about the beer. I never assume that I know somebody through an online comment thread. I don’t assume to know that much about you. I’m sure if we met in person we’d have a jolly time. If you assume you know me through this thread – you are being close minded.

That said – this conversation is done in my mind because it isn’t going anywhere productive.

Interesting that you cleaned up the spelling on Shirky without noting it was in error in the first place.

You’re a high-integrity guy. But as you say, journalism is a process.

But you seem to want to take little potshots at people, and then take the high road when it comes back at you.

That’s knobbish behaviour. Should our paths cross, we can skip the beer.

Toodles.

I hope you feel as though you have won something. If we ever meet in person – I guess I owe you a beer.

That is: If you would ever bother yourself to hang with a low-life like me and if I decide to overlook your obvious ill-intended comments.

From my point of view: You have an angle towards the entire conversation. It is very different from mine. That is great – I wish you luck in your life. But I do wish you’d get out of mine.

If my writings are muddled it is simply because I am not giving this conversation the time you seem to put into it.

Furthermore – your last comment was rude and unconstructive. Way to be a jerk. I hope you are proud of yourself.

Goodbye.

Did you read this from one of my earlier comments: “Here’s a tweet I sent to @jimbradysp on Monday: ‘In a way, I wish there were more citizen journos. I wish I could follow a blog/twitter feed from every nabe in my city’”?

Does that sound anti-citizen journalist? I don’t think it does. Your reading and cognitive skills aren’t at the levels they should be.

By the way, although I’ve worked as a pro journo for more than 20 years, I don’t have a j-degree. But I have taught it a bit and worked with volunteers – enough to know that some instantly have what it takes and that many don’t.

As to defining journalism, this is a good place to start – http://bit.ly/8fX7Y8

I don’t care who does it, but I do care about the output: Does it tell me something I didn’t know before? Is that something interesting, important and in the public interest (I think one can sometimes differentiate between news and journalism)? Has its main assertions been cross-checked and verified? Are they accurate? Is it well-written (or otherwise well-told), well-researched and put things in the proper context? Does the output show some evidence of critical thinking? Did it get the names right? On that last one, be advised that Clay Shirky’s surname doesn’t have an ‘e’ in it.

While it may not fit in with the tenets of your faith, there are a lot of idiots who never leave their back yards. But there are people who are engaged with their wider world in part by following the news about it. Again, I’ve been a journalist for a while and talked – and continue to talk — to a lot of ordinary citizens. There is an empirical basis for my assertion.

Your statement that I’m saying there’s only smart journos and dumb everyone else is nonsense about me but speaks volumes about you.

This makes no sense: “Yet your example was using Fox news…… The spin in that case is coming from folks who try to own the Big J journalism label.”

I wrote this: During the health care town halls in the U.S. this past summer, the Daily Show pulled a quote of one elderly guy in Arizona who said: “I don’t like the ’spin’ of the mainstream media. That’s why I watch Fox!”

Maybe I’m missing something, but to me, that clearly showed the guy was looking for an outlet that confirmed his biases – a phenomenon that I suspect is quite prevalent these days. Why you used that as a reason to throw another ‘Big J journalism’ in mystifies me.

I’m glad you agree on the need for exposure to new ideas.

“Where we disagree is that somehow there is an ownership over the word journalism.”

Dave, Dave, Dave – Where we disagree is over the act of journalism, although again, your writing tends to be muddled, so it’s frustratingly hard to determine what you mean.

Mere “honest conversation” amongst friends isn’t journalism. Finding out stuff that matters and then transmitting that information to the wider community to give such conversations a factual basis is the fundamental building block of journalism.

Did you read this in my Nov. 19 comment: “’The ability for communities to be informed with honest information’ isn’t the exclusive purview of pro journalists. There are smart bloggers in Canada who have done some good work ferreting out interesting angles on national politics. To that, I say great!”

You couldn’t have, otherwise you wouldn’t have made the foolish statements you do towards the end of your last comment.

Frankly, I have every right – if not a duty — to speak out about stupid pronouncements on journalism.

“You are right: No BIG J Journalist is going to tell me how to think. Should they? Should I just turn on the TV and swallow whatever and have them tell me how to think?”

Another dumb misinterpretation. When did I say you should swallow everything that’s published or broadcast by MSM outlets? I do think it’s goofy when people assert the only credible people are their friends. I also happen to think it’s dangerous if people only ascribe something with the qualities of relevance or credibility if it conforms to their existing biases.

Please state where I said ordinary people are useless for reporting — and if you can’t find it, please retract.

Please do some research and find where I’ve ever argued at any time in my life that journalism should be a restricted, credentialed profession. Good luck to you on that one.

I will state that for higher-end accountability reporting, the pros get the job done. Some citizens can and do contribute, but most don’t have the time, interest or skills to do much more than very basic reportage. But even that would be a contribution to the news ecosystem (again, read the comment I made to Jim Brady that you skipped over. Read the one I left for Cody Brown that you skipped over). But again, Muddle Man, you started out by telling me that cit-Js aren’t out to replace what pros do, but now you say … what, exactly?

I will also say that there’s a difference in accountability itself. If I get it wrong, I can get reprimanded or lose my livelihood. What are the consequences for someone such as Joe the Plumber getting it wrong?

By the way, what did you think of his reporting adventures last year? Learn anything?

You talk about this “ministry” having “the truth.”

Again, I wrote this earlier: “Personally, I think if I went around thinking I know ‘the truth,’ I’d be doing people a disservice.”

Evangelists in the Church of Muddled, Ill-Thought-Out Journalistic Populism might be well-advised to adopt the same attitude.