Personally I think the traditional media will only start circling the drain once we start turning away from them in favour of independent sources. One of the points Butler makes over and over again is that quality control is our overriding imperative. In this case I would argue that quality control means trust. We (as in we the public) still feel more inclined to believe that something our licence fee pays for will be more authoritative than what a privat blogger will put online.

At the same time we can now access newswires online. Sites such as Reuters let us (public/journalists) keep abreast with breaking news as it happens. It may not be real time but we can be reasonably confident that Reuters will have a story at the same time the BBC does if not even earlier.

But from the public’s point of view I’m not sure that really matters that much. News as a commodity still relies on journalists. Not necessarily to find the primary information but to package it in a way that makes it relevant to the audience. The journalist can contextualize information. He or she benefits from resources which allow him or her to save the public time (if not necessarily money). We (journalists) can put a factoid in relation to the wider goings on.

This means that for some the role of journalist may be changing but at the end of the day it’s still about telling a story. A story which is not only well researched and interesting but that also gives the audience more than the bare facts.

Facts alone don’t make a story. But facts only make sense if we can imbed them in a narrative. That’s the journalist’s job and I don’t think all the blogs in china will change that.