Here's to the hierarchy of news

Where does news come from?   You might think that, six months into a Broadcast Journalism Masters, I'd be able to answer that poser in a heartbeat.  Not a bit of it.

I had naively imagined before embarking on the course that we were all going to be let in on some kind of industry secret about how journalists get a good story - or any story.   It transpires that the secret to finding a story as a trainee journalist is that rare combination of luck and judgement.   Luck that you happen across something of vague interest in the first place and judgement that you are able to discern just how vague the interest is permitted to be before it no longer constitutes a story.

Until, that is, you find yourself in the fortunate position of working for a news organisation with real status.   Then, it seems, stories have a habit of coming to you.   How else to explain the fact that the country's national and local press, not to mention broadcast media, are full of stories which elude the mortal trainee?   Because some of us just aren't very good?   Well, probably - but I think there is a more fundamental reason. 

News finds its way to the organisations with the greatest ability to disseminate it.   If you had information on anything from a church fayre to a big political scandal, where are you going to take it?   Some obscure blogger (asks the obscure blogger)?    No - the chances are you would go straight to one of the 'traditional' media outlets that are increasingly portrayed as some kind of stain on the modern media landscape.

That's not to say established media outlets have it easy when it comes to generating stories.   Much of their material will be down to old fashioned legwork and contacts.   Yet here again, they excel, because of the access their status affords them.   Real journalists from real news organisations succeed where trainees operating in an artificial environment never could.

All of which reinforces my innate scepticism about the fashionable concept that 'we're all journalists now'.   Even as a trainee, I don't consider myself a bona fide journalist - no authority has been conferred on my words.   The lack of status and access means that I could never aspire to emulate anything a traditional media outlet could produce.   

Some commentators seem to be confusing citizen journalism (the ability to state your opinion in a blog or get lucky with some mobile phone footage) with the craft of newsgathering and production.   The internet and those who populate it have undoubtedly opened up a new journalistic frontier.   The speed, breadth and depth of available information assists journalists enormously - but it should never replace them.   Elites are deeply unpopular in an age when the internet is seen as a great leveller.   Yet without a journalistic elite to gather, filter and judge the raw material, the competing, partial, biased voices of the internet could mislead us into thinking we know a lot about everything, when, in fact, we know very little about anything at all.  

The hierarchy of news remains intact - for now.   If the dark day ever comes when the presses stop rolling and the television news goes blank, then we had better hope the organisations behind them survive in some other form.   If they don't, then it won't just be trainees like me who will be missing out on stories - we all will.