The Death Of The Journalist



Once upon a time, having just graduated, I lived in a house full of journalists in Streatham Hill, South London. I was a TV cameraman, compared to my housemates, I did boring stuff like FA Cup finals and Friday Night Live (Loadsamoney!).

They doorsteped stars and came home with ‘green carded’ stories of Ministers caught with trussed up rent boys in the back of their cars.

Journalism was venal and some of the very brightest people acted totally immorally in the employ some of the most dubious people who have ever walked this earth - Maxwell, Murdoch, the Barclays, Rothermere.... these people thought that they were Gods. Some of them still do.

Journalists are, apparently, trained. They are also, apparently, required to be able to spell, and some publications even fact check their ‘stories’.

But most journalism is just opinion or bias. It’s events described not as they happen, but from a point of view. And even if a publication has some vestige of neutrality on its reporting, it quickly drowns it in ‘opinion’.The Guardian and the New York Times are well regarded publications full of loaded bias.

Journalism is merely hubris. An opinion with an audience, sometimes, of tens of millions.

But now that audience is online and listens only to those who have singularly built massive ecosystems that far surpass printed publications. Something called PewDiePie is the biggest medium on earth today apparently.

The journalist is dead. 

Or, rather, we are all journalists.

You have a degree in journalism. Haha! Why didn’t you spend all that time and money building your blog or YT channel ?

I suspect today that house in Streatham Hill is full or vloggers and bloggers....