Re:Goodbye from Salon
by bluebarbet on Friday November 06, 2026 @05:29AM
(#50390600)
It's a superficially reasonable objection that elides the crucial detail: Modern journalism is a profession. It has standards of entry, an established mission (fact-finding, truth-seeking), and a code of ethics. We can choose to be cynical about those constraints, but the fact is that none of them apply to a random person on Youtube or Substack.
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This. Say what you want about the tenets of journalism, but at least it's an ethos.
The 'citizen journalist' is at best a part time volunteer and at worst an astroturf'd contractor of a PR department.
And as the quip goes about volunteers -- willing to work for free, altruistic, and competent: pick two.
Occasionally you get delightful humans that combine all three, but they're needles in haystacks.