Of course, I tell people they don’t have to change their writing assuming they’re already good writers. A dangerous assumption, I’m sure.

I agree that journalism IS a profession where people learn professional writing and story skills. But so is novel writing, public relations, and speech writing. But how many journalists become novelists and speechwriters when they clearly have not gone to an MFA, have a degree in PR, or even taken speech writing classes? Are they there because they’re good writers, and good writers can adapt to different situations?

The same is true for real citizen journalists. The people who learn how to write effectively without a journalism degree, learn how to tell a story, how to do proper research, etc., are the ones who are going to be effective. The “market” will sort out who is going to be the good one and who is not.

There are plenty of people who have become effective journalists without this training, and learn while they’re doing it. The readers/viewers decide whether they’re actually worth following. If they don’t write well, can’t tell a story, get facts wrong, etc., no one will read or watch. But the ones who do it well will do it as well as, or even better, than the big-J Journalists.

To say that journalism can only be done by trained professionals limits not only people who want to become journalists, but then it must preclude journalists from ever leaving mainstream media and taking on other trained writing positions.

It’s not good to advise people they “don’t have to change the scope of [their] blog, [their] writing style, or even the quality of [their] writing.” Absolutely, these must change or a citizen journalist’s writing is opinion or commentary or worse — babble, not news.

Okay, I hope these means we can still be friends :-)

This post was mentioned on Twitter by edeckers: New post: The Growing Need for Bloggers as Citizen Journalists. http://bit.ly/cVe0Ov…