The Future is Bloggered

I like to think that I will come out of my degree with a specialism in online journalism. When I was working in my pub last year I came across the editor of ElleOnline who told me that print journalism is dead, why the hell am I doing a magazine journalism course, and I had better bloody well come out of it knowing CSS.

This woman scared me. I'm spending nearly 8 grand on my degree and it might be defunct in a few years? So I went in with high hopes of doing every online and web-based course that the universiy would offer. This has turned me into a bitter lady.

Last week the BBC aired a programme called Wonderland: Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love.
It focused on the weird programme 'Second Life', an internet chat room that allows users to totally ignore their real lives and create a second life for themselves, making them into hotter, sexier and generally better people than they are. The programme profiled two couples who had found each other on Second Life and fell in love. One couple married (in the programme, not real life) and another couple made their 'avatars' (the characters) have sex. Seriously. It was like something out of that movie with Sly Stallone and Sandra Bullock who have sex using those helmets and no physical touching. The name escapes me.

This distraught hour of my life made me realise that some people would rather live their lives in the internet than in the real world. And I can only see this becoming increasingly the norm.

Every week I sit in my online journalism class and hear about how journalists are dead. The rise of the citizen journalist, us bloggers, is going to report from the war zones, upload their story to the net and allow reader comments. The Guardian has got on this bandwagon with 'comment is free' and it sees anyone from bricklayers to politicians contributing to it. Lots of people on my course have written on it.

Now, it may be crap journalism, it's one-sided and badly spelt. But does blogging mean the end of jouralists? More and more journos are starting to blog and this is what my scary Elle editor was trying to tell me I think: that to make it in this world as a journalist, you' have to learn how to use the internet to your advantage. Express your views in your blog, upload your own videos and podcasts and allow readers to comment, get a loyal following. So that when the print dies (and the trees start to grow again), you are not left unemployed.

My university realised this this year and have now introduced an online course for everyone. We are all expected to blog, make websites, upload podcasts, the lot.

But it is the select 8 of us who attend our friday online specialisms who see the big picture. That most of the bloggers out there are ordinary citizens and they are going to take our jobs. That as more people emerse their lives in the internet and less so in the real life, they will have more involvement with making, researching and finding the news themselves and rely less on us journalists. Our small class discuss these issues for two hours a week. We see the technology that enters the market each week and cry about how this will affect the future. My guess (especially after seeing this bbc programme)? The future is fucked for those who like to live in the real world.