Here’s the bottom of the barrel, yet she’s a “journalist” just as you are, Mr. Rosenberg. (After reading her piece, you’ll no doubt want to take a shower.)

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/the_freak_of_the_week_l0a8Hm4OcLKKWaeakydEnN

Professor John C. Merrill of the University of Missouri writes:

[quote] Journalism around the world is in a chaotic, fragmented, unethical and largely anti-social state. [...] Journalism is losing its appeal to serious, moral persons and is becoming simply another business enterprise. The “bottom line” has become the objective in the media world—not public enlightenment and social progress.

It has become evident that the gulf between freedom and responsibility is as wide as ever. There need not be an incompatibility between the two; a free media system can also be responsible and qualitative. Under the present systems in the world, however, this is virtually impossible.

What is needed is a fusion—a dialectic that brings freedom and responsibility together. This can only be done by professionalizing journalism. In other words, making journalism a true profession—self-controlling and providing high standards—for the members of the profession.

Licensing, yes. Entrance exams, yes. Quality control, yes. A method of expelling unprofessional members, yes. Continuing education, yes. Mastery of a body of knowledge, yes. But all of these things would be done by the profession itself. No outside interference. No external control. The profession would be the authority. The profession would be free of outside interference. The profession would regulate itself, choose its members, and limit their activities. In short the profession would be free and at the same time would set standards and control itself.

The crux of the media ethics problem, contrary to much academic opinion, is simple. We have generally believed that ethical action can come only from autonomous or freely determined persons. We have come to assume that there must be no coercion of the mass communicator for ethics to kick in. Therefore if the communicator is under some kind of external control, ethics becomes a kind of non-concept, not applicable. And so arises the media ethics problem. It seems that freedom speaks louder than ethics. If I (or my mass medium) is to be ethical, it must be autonomous in its decision-making. [quote]

So, no, not just anyone can do journalism, in my opinion. When there’s no bouncer at the door, what you get is Andrea Peyser. Ugh.

So yes, perhaps in the case of ‘specialist journalism’ the reporting isn’t good enough for the niche – but on a mass level it’s still important to have journalist’s who can scratch the surface of complex issues. The web is good because it allows people to explore those complex issues quicker and easier than before.

I often get some giggles with the MSN / Windows Live popup box which displays a slider to control which type of content you want; News or Goss.
So it starts at goss with the headline “It’s official: Destiny’s Child will never reunite” which is not so strange, but when you slide it to ‘News’ you get stories like “Cheap stunt: Katy Perry gets catty over Lady Gaga”.