What you describe hardly speaks for the majority of journalists. There are always exceptions to every rule, but they are just that: exceptions. Most of them are passionate, thorough journalists and writers, and it's very hard to get paid decently for that. And to the journalists that _do_ write inflammatory pieces, I'd argue that you could just as easily point to software engineers that have compromised their own ethics in exchange for large salaries from tech companies.
Depends if you include the current mob of professional bloggers in there, because they sure outnumber the real journalists. They're really just word laborers, as they constantly have to produce fresh content to draw in new clicks. Unlike real knowledge work, it's a blue collar job now, just one that requires literacy.
Passion is also a poor substitute for knowledge. Gell-Mann Amnesia is still as true as ever too. The entire profession has an undeserved reputation of accuracy and impartiality, and now they're eagerly self-destructing what remains of it.
Most of all, they always stay within the same broad lines. As I saw someone observe recently... If the French gilets jaunes were happening in a South American country, would the coverage be remotely the same? When it comes time to beat the American war drum, will the result be any different from the last couple of times?
The envy of tech, and the associated aspersions are also highly misplaced. Nobody forced the press to embed five dozen trackers on every page and chase clickbait with informational junkfood. Nobody forced them to give up their autonomy to social media, instead of building their own infrastructure. The people whose self image put them several rungs above those icky nerds are still inappropriately bitter about that inversion of status, for sure.
To me, the model for 21st century journalism seems obvious: wikipedia, except not written by the obsessed and the mentally ill. Give me an ever-updating impartial dossier on each major topic and conflict, sorting the wheat from the chaff, and providing a timeline of key events with deeper elaborations one click away.
If the profession matched its self image, they'd have succeeded at doing something like that, instead of racing buzzfeed to the bottom.
Personally I'm really waiting for the rest of that 85% to go.
No, but like journalists, they (we) have a job that gives them influence over those who use their products. We facilitate the discourse and the dispersal of news that most journalism agencies must now use. Not even 20 years ago, news agencies held this same role.
