The concept of professionalism in the New Media (Week 3)
One of the most controversial issues around the new media and online journalism since its very beginnings is the notion of professionalism. Here, we will deal with some aspects related to the concept to this concept through the readings of two articles: ‘The Media Downing of Pierre Salinger’ (Thomas E. Ruggiero and Samuel P. Winch) and ‘Who are these guys? : The Online Challenge to the Notion of Journalistic Professionalism’ (Jane B. Singer).
The notion of cultural authority becomes very significant in relation to journalistic professionalism. According to Starr (1982), this concept can be defined as ‘the power to define and describe reality’. Moreover, ‘cultural authority’ gives journalists the ability not only to decide what is “news”, but also to control and define standards of journalistic practice’ (Zelizer, 1993).
The fundamental challenge that online journalists face nowadays, in relation to traditional media, is professionalism. What defines someone as a professional? Which criteria should be used to define what is professional and what’s not? How can achieve an online journalist the category of professional?
Well, despite a lot of different criteria to define it, it seems more worthy to forget about the medium (traditional or online) and focus in the news. In my opinion, there’s professional journalism both in its digital and traditional forms, it’s not something that depends on the medium but on the way journalists deal with the subject. In the same way, we can find clear examples of non-professional journalist in both media environment.
All this means that professionalism is more related to concepts such as investigative reporting or objectivity. Any critic should focus on these concepts, instead of the medium, since attacking the medium seems to have to do more with biases and a more conservative ideology than with an actual lack of professionalism. One of the reasons for this kind of attacks can be found in the ‘replacement hypothesis’. According to it, new media will replace old media. However, I believe much more in the integration of both media, as it happened in the past with TV or radio, in the sense that the history is repeating again and again.
