10 Reasons To Be Cheerful Journalists

Online Journalism Blog has launched a website inviting journalists to say why the profession is going “in the right direction”.

The brainchild of university lecturer Paul Bradshaw and his team, JollyJournalist.com aims to fight the “thick veil of gloom” that is “slowly blanketing journalism”.

According to OJB: “We stand against this trend. We are sure that journalism is getting better and stronger by the day. And that journalists will benefit from this.”

To kickstart its campaign, the blog has come up with ten reasons to illustrate why the current landscape presents today’s journalists with great opportunities.

Here’s some of the highlights from the list:


* “Be the paperboy. That’s actually better than it sounds: As a journalist, you can now also take care of the distribution of your content - and decide whether you want it to be an article, a blog post, a video, a podcast or whatever.”

* “Real-time fact-checking. Interviewing a politician who’s bluffing you with tons of statistics? Ask her to quote the source and confront her with Google on your 3G cell-phone.”

* “Feedback that’s not from mom. Reading comments, blog-searching or twitter-watching let you see what others are saying about your article or your area of expertise.”