Tag Archives: professional journalist

Newsnight: Paxman interviews Huffington on ‘curation’ and editing of reports from Iran

Jeremy Paxman interviews Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington and the Evening Standard’s Anne McElvoy on the use of non-traditional media/amateur reports from Iran and the concept of ‘curating’ this information as opposed to traditional editing.

McElvoy usefully describes the intersection of as a complex mosaic with each piece contributing subjective information – but information that requires an overview/comparison that can be added by an editor or professional journalist.


BBC NEWS | Programmes | Newsnight | Has internet journalism come of age?.

BBC’s Paul Mason: Newsrooms offer journalists peer review that ‘pyjama bloggers’ can’t replicate

Paul Mason, economics editor of BBC’s Newsnight and National Union of Journalist (NUJ) rep for the programme, gives some fairly frank thoughts to the union on journalism, its future and its relation to new technologies and forms of publishing in the video interview below.

“What you have to do is to try and define what the skilled class of professional journalist actually does in that world. What makes us worth employing? We are the ones who provide accurate information: we’re not going to disappear,” he says, before asking how many bloggers can be described as authoritative.


Discussing recent journalism job losses, Mason argues that this is not the result of just the recession, but has been caused by ‘deskilling and the rise of new technology’.

Accuracy, authority and the peer review mechanism of the newsroom will safeguard journalism’s future, he adds.

“A newsroom is a real-time peer review system – that bloggers in their pyjamas can’t replicate.”

Is this really the case? Mason’s views have sparked some reactions among journo-bloggers, including Kevin Anderson and Patrick Smith:

Your thoughts please.