Mass amateurization, according to
Shirky, is how society receives the news and from whom it comes from. It is not
the different types of news institution,
such as the Star Ledger versus USA Today, but it is what news becomes real news
and by who it is coming from. “Until recently, the news had two different
things- events that are newsworthy and events covered by the press” (Everyone
Is A Media Outlet, pg. 64).
Who, might you ask, were in charge of
saying a story was news worthy? Someone who is a professional, like a news
editor. A professional is someone who specializes in something and has more
knowledge then the general public. He or she learns things in a way that make
them stand out in this specialty then from the rest of society. However, the
valuable meaning of the word professional has slowly been fading away.
As the years went on, the Internet
became bigger and bigger and people were able to write about a topic and able
to publish it on the Web. Just like that. One might be a professional photographer,
who has extensive knowledge on taking photographs, but things like Instagram
and Flickr are making it easy for anyone to become a “professional
photographer.”
It has always been up to a
professional to decide what was breaking news, what to report on, and how to
bring it to the public. Now with the Internet and social media, self published
articles and contents are growing at an insane amount. The problem with that is
that there are a lot of unreliable information out there. Self published
articles being factual and trust-worthy information are much less compared to
The New Republic.
However, there is always a good in
every situation. By having just the professional responsible for the news, it
created a bias and narrow-minded way of understanding what should be talked
about and what should be released. By having the general public, “mass
amateurization of publishing undoes the limitations inherent in having a small
number of traditional press outlets” (Everyone Is A Media Outlet, pg. 65). When
Guttenberg first created the invention of a movable type, which created books
much faster then anyone could ever imagine, a person like a scribe became not
as important. A scribe, who invested everything to the work of literacy, once
had the skills that were once looked upon as rare and remarkable before the
movable type. The task to read and write was looked upon as scholarly and
irreplaceable. This is the same as publishing a self-written article to the Web
due to the availability of our new technological advances.
In a
journalistic view, the definition of a journalist is “a person who writes for
newspapers or magazines or prepares news to be broadcast on radio or
television.”[1]This
definition has worked for decades, because one isn’t a journalist unless they work
for a publisher. However, in today’s
time, anyone in the world can instantly publish something and it’s globally
available and easy to find, therefore; if anyone can be a publisher, then
anyone can be a journalist.
The problem with that is who should
be protected with privileges of being a journalist. As a journalist, they have
a right to grant promises of confidentiality in order to convince potential
sources to cooperate. There is no
federal law because its goes back to the main point, who, exactly, is a
journalist and who should enjoy journalistic privileges.
Not knowing who to protect as a
journalistic is just one of the problems of the outcome of mass amateurization.
The other is the need that certain important professions are slowly fading away,
such as publishers. “Generations are growing up without the scarcity that made
publishing such a serious-minded pursuit, the written word has no special value
in and of itself.”[2]
Content is just words now. Just like the scribe value vanished when reading and
writing became common, the professional high standing demur of a journalist or
a publisher will soon vanish.
The TV has its limitations and one
can only have a one-to-many relationship, such as a one-way street. The
fraternity brothers on their beer stained couch can see the Cowboy football
game, but the Cowboy football players or the fans that are all being
broadcasted on the TV can not see the young frat boys.
The Web is different because with the
Web, it is a many-to-many type of communication. If Tony Romo had a blog or
personal Tweet, the potential he could respond back is undoing the one-way
nature of television and allowing everyone to interact with everyone. Many
blogs, like Tony Romo, have over million, followers on Twitter and those followers
only have a dozen or less followers. There are two things, unrelated to
technology, that have to happen for one to be famous. “he or she has to have
some minimum amount of attention, an audience in the thousands or more. Second,
he or she has to be unable to reciprocate.”3 The problem is that
Tony Romo, even if he wanted to answer all of his fans, he physically cannot.
There is only so much one can read. The TV has its limitation interactively but
the Web does not, unless it comes to the capacity one can read.
Traditional media have had a few
built in constraints that make the filtering problem relatively simple. In the
past, the filtering of the good from the not good have relied on the publishers
judgment. “A ‘published author’ is just a way to assure people that external
filter has been applied to the work”1 Now, the ways of filtering has
changed.
“Mass amaturization of publishing makes mass amateurization
of filtering a forced move. Filter-to-publish, rested on a scarcity of media
that is a thing of the past. The expansion of social media means that the only
working system is publish-then-filer.”1 Throughout the lost art of
filtering, the line between broadcast media and communication media has faded
away as well.
According to Jenkins essay, “Why
Heather Can Write,” he talks about how technology, and the future of media, is
no longer to make things simpler for adults but also help teach the younger to
succeed. “…shaping childhood is often seen as a way of shaping the future
direction of our culture.”[3]
Jenkins basically wants everyone to be a scribe. There should be literacy to
all, even though all over the Internet, which did create the “Harry Potter”
controversy. Should books like this be banned? I think not because I think it
changed the reading and writing skills for both children and grown-ups. In Why Heather Can Write, in terms of mass
amateurization, just like with Shirky, any person can publish content to the
Web. The problem, although good and different in some terms, some people have
not had formal education and training to become a professional in this topic,
and their work should not be even in comparison with Jenkins or Shirky. To
Jenkins, the fan fiction clubs is when children take books like Harry Potter
and create their own stories. The scary thought it that these children are not
thinking of things on their own, yet just regenerating prior knowledge or
thoughts. Fair thought to think but
Jenkins says, “these kids are passionate about writing because they are
passionate about what they are writing about.”3 Jenkins compares
these fans to the normal joe-schmos who post things to blogs, not for the
money, but for the happiness it brings to these people. By having this, they no
longer have such a narrow-minded way of thinks. These writers write with so
much lust and appetite about these topics because they
enjoy doing it. This will now go to my prediction
on the future of media
as a profession. I believe there will no longer be a publisher, or at least,
exist as what we have today. There will be a more tactical, organize way to
filter and publish factual content, however, just not the way we used to do it.
I think there needs to be stages of to check the facts in articles, as well as
making it clear to the reader that an article did not pass all levels of
credibility. I think also, there needs to be levels of the Web. If one wants an actual profession, one who
study and learned just like the scribes, then there is a search engine just for
that. Usernames like VixonKitty with her opinion or “factual researched”
article on Lance Armstrong, should be put on a different search engine then
Cory Doctorow.
[1] "Definition of Journalist
Noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary." Journalist.
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
[2] http://mattrking.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/shirky_everyone_1.pdf
[3] Jenkins, Henry. "Why
Heather Can Write." Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media
Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. 177. Print.
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