Having recently joined the National Amateur Press Association as a trial member to find out what the group was all about, I received their regular bundle of amateur journalists’ publications. I read through a few to get a feel for the organization’s ideals and goals, and one of the ones that caught my eye was The Prickler, published by Barry Schrader of DeKalb, Illinois.
Schrader asked the question, “Will blogging doom ‘Amateur Journalism’?” in a single-fold pamphlet, and I found myself curious.
After reading his June 2010 installment of The Prickler, it seems that Schrader believes:
“… this new age of computing and online expression has had little or only marginal effect on the AJ groups. They continue in decline and seem to have lost their attractiveness to young people…”
According to Schrader, young people have little interest in the “old-timers” that make up the NAPA, and thus their club will eventually have to look to failed or thwarted “real” journalists to swell their ranks—people who “intended to become newspaper reporters, graphic designers or creative writers but were forced into different careers for economic or other reasons.”
This, to me, misses the whole point of blogging and digital publishing. After all, blogging is often referred to as “citizen journalism” by mainstream news media (who also, in my opinion, largely miss the point—but that’s another entry for another day), and bloggers are often afforded the same rights as “real” news media outlets, and then some. Odd, then, that Schrader would consider bloggers not to be amateur journalists, presumably because they do not pay dues to the NAPA (or the American Amateur Press Association, its more modern counterpart), or print their works on dead trees. If one sends out e-newsletters rather than “tree-newsletters” (as Sy Safransky of The Sun might call them), does this make one less of an amateur journalist? I would think not. But then, I suppose the entire argument really hinges on the definition of “journalism,” and the ways in which writers for the web currently perceive themselves.
Prior to my discovery of the NAPA, I never would have described myself as an amateur journalist. A journalist, perhaps, having at one point written a column for a newspaper, but certainly not an amateur. The description does, however, make sense. One who does not work for a professional publication but instead publishes for personal reasons, without formal training or schooling is, effectively, an amateur journalist. Bloggers, then, are for the most part amateur journalists. But if I publish a blog, and have never been to J-school, does this make me an amateur journalist by default, even though I have previously published a regular column in a newspaper? The distinction seems, to me, irrelevant, and by default casts aspersions on the whole concept of “amateur journalism” in our digital age.
Ultimately, I feel that blogging and amateur journalism do not compete for the same audience. Blogs are for those who enjoy reading or browsing material online, whereas amateur journalism is the type of hobby writing that appears most often in the form of annual holiday newsletters printed on special stationery. Is one better than the other? No, although one is certainly more easily accessible by strangers. Both may be home to great or terrible writing, and both may have their audiences and their detractors. I suppose, as a child of the Internet, I simply don’t see much attraction to spending my hard-earned money on printing things up for a limited audience when I can just go ahead and press “publish” on my blog for free.
In the end, I doubt I will end up joining the NAPA as a permanent member, not because I do not appreciate their efforts or enjoy their work, but because I prefer to join virtual communities as a blogger. I enjoy the ease of communication that the Internet affords us all (even when many of those easy communications turn out to be spam). I appreciate the comments readers leave on my blogs, no matter how few and far between, and I like being able to reach all of my friends at once with a few clicks of the keyboard and a post on Twitter that is instantly cross-posted to my Facebook account, spreading my work throughout the English-speaking world in a matter of nanoseconds. This instantaneous access is, I suspect, what originally drew most of us to the Internet, and what continues to hold us hostage to it. Can we really close the browser for good, when everyone is so effortless connected? It seems sacreligious to even suggest it.
And while I may occasionally wish I were a bit more inaccessible, taking a media holiday just to escape the inescapable, I really do love the Internet’s ability to bring people closer together through words and pictures and endlessly propagated memes. It’s quite amazing, really, when you stop to think about how it all works, and how my fingers typed these words only to transmit them directly to your brainpan a few minutes later. Sure, printed pages are nice, and I do hope to publish a real live book this fall, but blogging isn’t going to stop that from happening. (Well, not unless I never end this entry, anyway.)
What do you think? Are blogging and amateur journalism the same thing? Compatible? Incompatible? Friends or foes?
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I guess I’m still a little confused as to the definition of an amateur journalist. Seems to me that a person’s experience would determine his status as amateur or professional. Someone might earn a degree but never progress in that field after graduation, maybe even having quite a bit of talent but without regular use, his level of skill remaining somewhat untapped.
Blogging as an avenue of journalism is largely scoffed and ignored by many. However, the type of blogging–subject matter, style, diction–is a major determinant of its worth.
Some of the best writers may be hiding, undiscovered, behind a blog. Just because they don’t have to go through a third party in order to publish their thoughts does not make them less deserving of readers or attention. Everyone started out in that position at some time–some people remain there longer than others. But the fact remains that the means of publication or the amount of readers does not always accurately depict a writers’ level of skill or ability.
Would you agree?
I guess the question is whether one is still considered an “amateur” even though s/he has experience in the field. Am I an amateur journalist because I lack a certain number of credits? If so, how many must one have to be considered a “professional”? Different organizations offer different definitions, too, so if you can be considered a professional with only 5 credits total to your name, versus needing 5 national publications, where do we draw the line? I think it becomes a semantic argument, and a silly one at that. One is a professional when one acts professionally, seeks full or part-time employment in the field, and produces work to prove his or her involvement, no?
I would agree that self-publication need not be frowned upon, and I don’t necessarily think it always indicates some type of progress to be published by others. It’s mainly a matter of persistence, though a certain level of skill may also be required by worthwhile publications.
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