Citizen Journalism

I missed the week 3 class unfortunately, but had the opportunity of viewing the presentation PowerPoint slides online through blackboard. I thought the slides were very good and before viewing them I hadn't thought of the extent of which we are presented with news by citizen journalists. It makes me think about the first journalism class we had in week 2 where Christina told us to realise the fact that we may not be able to get a job, especially in print journalism and how much citizen journalism may be affecting the journalist job decline. Why pay someone to write something when a citizen journalist could post the same news online, talk about it on the radio, send a camera photo of it or post bout it on a public forum for free? This could be answered by saying that we pay these "real" journalists because they are objective and report the news fairly, where these citizen journalists have no such claim. but is the reporting of "real" journalists ever really objective? Everything anyone says or writes is the product of sociological and ideological factors so can anyone ever be objective? but perhaps without the issues of ownership and control that can have an effect on the objectivity of journalists; citizen journalists are the future source of more objective news..