Championing independent journalism: such a noble cause.

And one that Frontline has been fighting for since 2006, ironically the very same year as Twitter was founded.

Why is this ironic, you ask? Well, sitting in the audience at Frontline’s Face the future: tools for a modern age event last night, it was clear there is a struggle currently underway; a struggle that will shape the way news and information is disseminated and, consequently, the future of journalism.

Squeezed into the tiny Frontline Club, a stone’s throw from London’s Paddington Railway Station, there was a mild undercurrent of tension in the air. Old meets new, analogue meets digital, newspaper meets Twitter.

Chaired by Raymond Snoddy, a freelance journalist and presenter of BBC’s Newswatch, the purpose of the meet-up was to discuss whether the internet will consign newspapers to the history books, Twitter and Facebook are the vanguards of the journalistic revolution and, ultimately, is digital the only way?

On-hand to guide the discussion was Kevin Marsh, former Editor at the BBC College of Journalism; Laura Oliver, community co-ordinator for Guardian News and Media and Judith Townend, freelance journalist and events co-ordinator, former journalism.co.uk reporter and co-organiser of the News:Rewired conferences.

The main theme of the evening’s discussion emerged immediately. The problem for traditional  journalism is that there are faster, easier ways of disseminating information now, and anyone can have a go at being a journalist.

So, people with no journalistic training or qualifications can use technology and global distribution channels (i.e. the internet) to create, contribute and collaborate with other ‘citizen journalists’. But is this journalism? The answer, it transpires, is yes…and no.

The main problem is this. Journalism is a discipline where people learn how to identify reliable information, fact-check and validate what information they encounter. In the words of Kevin Marsh, journalism is a very precise profession centred on persistence and impartiality.

Marsh did acknowledge that journalists may not always live up to this, but at least the intention is there to provide accurate, impartial reporting.

A noble art vs. glorified gossip

Traditional journalism is a skill where pros distinguish fact from fiction, construct a narrative that pulls all the salient pieces of information together and present it to the public in a palatable, cogent manner. It’s a noble art.

Citizen Journalism, on the other hand, isn’t controlled and has an undisciplined life of its own. Fact can’t easily be separated from fiction, and social media essentially legitimises often unsubstantiated, vociferous claims. It’s glorified gossip, in other words.

These were the two journalistic paradigms presented to the Frontline Club audience.

The role of social media in 21^st century journalism

In a week that saw two News of the World reporters arrested on ‘phone-hacking allegations, the noble-art of journalism may not be as noble as it first appears. But it would be wrong to tar all journalists with the same brush, there are bad eggs in every industry and journalism is no different.

Journalists are incentivised to be honest, because if they’re found out that’s their career over. Citizen journalists, on the other hand, are often anonymous and it’s easy for rumours to spread without anyone knowing how it actually started. It’s a lot like tabloid journalism in many ways, with ‘anonymous’ sources and ‘close friends’ often cited to give credence to a story. But, at least, there’s normally a bylined reporter where the buck stops at.

It’s not that citizen journalists are taking over from the ‘real’ journalists; it’s just that it’s easier than ever for the general public to participate in the news-sharing process. Journalists can’t compete with crowdsourced reporting, so journalists must find ways of using these same digital tools to their advantage, rather than simply dismissing them as worthless.

And this was a key point to emerge from Frontline yesterday evening. Laura Oliver described how newer networking hierarchies are forming as a result of social media. She learns which Twitter users to trust and strikes up relationships with key contacts across the Twittersphere.

This isn’t all that different from old-school journalism, where sourcing news was all about having access to key contacts. But with social media, it’s more open and transparent. Though, with the likes of direct messaging and email, it’s easy to make a public conversation private.

Journalism is dead…long live journalism

To conclude, social media isn’t killing journalism. It’s simply forcing journalists to engage in different ways. People have always liked gossip and hearsay – it was mentioned at Frontline that only 8% of Sun readers believe what they read in its pages. Most people understand the difference between reliable, quality journalism and rumour.

On the day of the Japanese Earthquake, fifteen million people headed to the BBC website for coverage, with over four million people streaming video. Social media platforms such as Twitter are merely tools that permit information to flow freely across the World Wide Web. They’re not killing journalism, but they are changing it, and the journalists left standing will be the ones that embrace these changes.

This all sounds a lot like the Creative Services Exchange vs. Madison Avenue, with digital disrupting age-old, traditional models. And you can expect to see many other industries go the same way.