I’ve just read this post on the “value of journalism by Martin Cloake, which forms the first in what should be an interesting week of debate with the Freelance Unbound blog on the topic.
Martin writes: “Journalism never was a profession, despite many journalists pretending it was. Anyone could call themselves a journalist, and that hasn’t changed.
“What has changed is that more people who call themselves journalists have access to the means of publication. Which is probably why the debate has got increasingly heated.”
I’m not sure it is quite as clean cut as that. I’m not being elitist about journalism because to an extent we all do it in some form in our day-to-day lives: simply by phoning a friend and telling them what happened when you went out the night before is a form of reporting, of storytelling.
But it’s not journalism, per se. For me, people who want to call themselves journalists have to have the core skillset – the legal knowledge, an understanding of public affairs, a close appreciation of anything they specialise in – coupled with the ability to write eloquently.
That’s what differentiates the experts that are interviewed for a story rather than writing it themselves – they might know everything there is to know about their area of expertise, but if they can’t put it in to a readable 350-word story for their audience then they can’t be called journalists, even if they want to sit and write about the topic.
Maybe anyone can call themselves a journalist – but that doesn’t mean everyone can ‘do’ journalism.