Amy BoughnerI have been feeling sick to my stomach almost all day.
I took a nap this morning and when I woke up there was a message from Joe asking whether I had seen what was going on at Postmedia. Mergers, layoffs. Very bad news.
You see, I stopped being a journalist a long time ago. Well, not really – once a journalist, always a journalist. I stopped trying to work as a journalist but I still have a passion for journalism. I was raised on journalism. Both of my parents studied it, it was all around me. People with great respect for the trade and its product.
This is devastation.
And my biggest fear is that a majority of people don’t know what they lost today.
You see, I don’t believe in citizen journalism, and I don’t believe good reporting can be done for free. Just because you have a police scanner app on your phone doesn’t mean that you have access. Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean you’re a reporter.
Good journalism, real journalism, is a very special skill. It’s access and instinct. It’s time spent digging. Talking to the right people and asking the right questions.
Too many people don’t understand the real value of great journalism. They want it for free and they think it will be the same.
I have been feeling sick to my stomach all day because a lot of people lost their jobs today, most of them hard-working people who were dedicated to jobs that have bad pay and shitty hours because they saw the promise of what good journalism can do.
I don’t know how we reverse this trend, but we would all benefit if we could figure it out.
