Lindsey’s Daily Deal: Hey, Elaine Fogel. This one’s for you.

By Lindsey Campbell, Captains of Industry

Hey Captains’ readers,

For your Monday Deal, I’ve decided to address another fellow blogger, Elaine Fogel. Her excellent blog post on MarketingProfs captivated me so much that I’ve decided to use my Deal to answer her questions at the end of her post. In case you didn’t get a chance to read the lovely Elaine’s low down, here’s a quick summary. Basically, Fogel fears for journalism’s life. She’s afraid that everything that made journalism a great and reliable method of collecting important news and dispersing it to the masses is slowly dying at the hand of citizen journalism. Things like fact checking, truth, integrity, and even taste are all but lost. As a blogger and marketer myself, I hate seeing one of my fellow comrades in distress, so here’s my best attempt to put Fogel’s mind at ease.

Lindsey’s Reasons Why Journalism Won’t Go To Hell in a Hand Basket:

1. Citizen journalism isn’t Satan on a stick

In fact, it can be quite good. By giving everyone a voice, we’re essentially telling big media conglomerates that they can suck it—but maybe in a much nicer way. Rather than relying on a handful of journalists who are constantly being pressured to raise their ratings or provide a certain point of view in order to report the news, we can take matters into our own hands and report, comment and control the news. This not only provides us with a wider range of topics, opinions and facts to explore, but it gives the voice of the news back to the people. Instead of relying solely on a few hundred people to act as our watchdogs, citizen journalism is giving people the opportunity to watch out for themselves. I don’t know about you, but I think the less control people have over what I know, the better.

2. Don’t get it twisted

The beauty of having so MANY citizen journalists ruling the roost is that if someone gets a piece of news wrong, others can correct it. This way, the Stephen Glasses of the world don’t even have a sliver of a shot of pulling the proverbial wool over our eyes ever again. It’s sort of like Wikipedia for the news. Take a look at any news blog and you’ll see that people aren’t just voicing their opinions, but they’re providing relatable links for other readers to learn from.

3. People love to hate Lindsay Lohan

We just need to accept it. Like it or not, there’s a large majority of the population that like to know what celebrities are doing. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t also want to learn about the stock market, the war, or the national debt. People have been keeping their eye on celebs since the Hollywood sign was erected up in those famous California hills. People once obsessed over Marilyn Monroe. May West. Ginger Rogers. It’s a trend I’m afraid won’t ever go away, but we shouldn’t assume that the country is dumbing itself down because they like to be entertained by celebrity scandals. Some of the brightest people on the planet can’t resist them a little Lohan.

So, Fogel, to answer your biggest question, I don’t think journalism is dead. I think it’s just different. And while we work out the kinks (poor Shirley Sherrod), we should recognize the positive aspects of giving the people a voice. You have to admit, citizen journalism has its positives points. Take your blog post for instance. Without it, I wouldn’t have heard your opinion, your voice, or your point of view, leaving me to never consider why I think citizen journalism works or why it doesn’t. Believe it or not, people listen.

I did.

Until tomorrow,

Captain Lindsey