The end of journalists` ego era?

I read a very interesting article called “ Journalism without journalists”, by Michael Maier. The author found two on-line newspapers. He wrote that his main goals had been to create a newspaper without paper when founding the first one, Netzeitung. He created his second paper, Readings Edition, in order to have a newspaper without journalists. The reason why he wanted to do that was very interesting.
“ My experience with Netzeitung taught me that journalists are basically very conservative; they can give up some habits, but not all of them. The journalists with whom I worked at Netzeitung did not miss the physical paper, but they surely missed admiring their bylines in the paper over morning coffee”, he wrote. He also said that he had tried to avoid stressing the journalist’s authority through his byline right at the top of each article by using a link which led the reader to the journalist who edited an article. He explains that “it didn’t work—not because of the readers, but because of the journalists. The Internet’s heightened time pressures did not bother them; on the contrary, they soon defined speed as the major virtue of Internet journalism. But it dispirited the journalists to sign-off with the simple words “edited for the Web by …” even for articles that had been published in world-record speed. They either wanted to see their name in italics at the beginning of each text or they did not want to see it at all”.
The author says that journalist see their vocation as a mission and that “they want to be—and often are—the high priests of society: watchdogs, protesters, critics.” He said that journalists’ choice to place values before wealth, leads to arrogance and makes journalists look on their readers to some degree.
Citizen journalism changes the situation- readers can write. The authors write about things readers care about and in a way that readers find compelling. Internet brought us to a time where there is no difference between amateurs and professionals. The author finds it to be outrageous.
After this short summary of the article, I must admit that I disagree with the author at some important points.
I wouldn’t say that journalists have such a huge ego. They write for their readers, not for their friends. In a non- democratic society journalists write for the government, important business people, etc., and they might care for the byline. But in a developed democracy with full freedom of speech, I don’t think the byline is all the journalists care about.
Citizen journalism may bring the difference between amateurs and professionals, but I wouldn’t say that Internet caused it. There was never such a big difference between the two. Journalist could be anyone.
Articles wrote by readers maybe are more interesting, but it takes more time to read them all, and to avoid the inappropriate content.
Anyways, this is a very interesting observation by the author who probably had a lot of experience working with journalists. Maybe I am too conservative about his attitudes (not all of them, off course), but I appreciate journalism as an, in this case, old- fashioned profession.


Article
Michael Maier, Journalism without Journalists:
Vision or Caricature? ,
Founder and CEO, Blogform Publishing
Shorenstein Center Sagan Fellow, Spring 2007 .

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/journalism-without-journalists/