Am I not the Annie Leibovitz of building pictures?

These are out of order: top is afternoon, middle is morning and bottom is night. thanxxxxx

THE ONLINE REVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

I have a romanticized vision of what it means to be a journalist.
While this is most definitely not the reality today, I still like to imagine the world of journalism as one inhabited by visors with little placards reading “press” sticking out of them and unlit cigars smothered with the saliva of nervously-chewing editors.
To think that any semblance of this vision could become obsolete in the near future frightens me.
But this explanation for my online journalism phobia is not feasible, so let’s go to “The Online Revolution” for more pertinent concerns.
My favorite point that Parks makes is the danger of creating niches in the blogging world. Gary Faruggia describes this phenomenon as creating a “community of one.” He explains that if the subjects and viewpoints of blogs become too specialized, they will cater to a specific audience who will only consider one point of view. The whole idea of a free press connotes a marketplace of ideas and the fact that a reader can be presented with (excuse the cliché) fair and balanced coverage of both sides of the ideological spectrum. If a blogger appeals to a certain sect, his or her audience could fall into a habit on relying solely on this one person’s viewpoint.
Another point Parks makes is the danger of amateur bloggers passing themselves off as professional journalists. I don’t want to sound like too much of an elitist, but I’d like to think I’m paying $40,000 a year because my future profession requires more resources than a computer with internet capabilities and a set of opinions. Parks brings up the solution of newspapers encouraging reader blogs on their websites and monitoring the content of its posts.
But as far as I can tell, a news organization’s only recourse against unethical or inflammatory bloggers is revoking their posting privileges. If this is the case, can’t they just take their opinions to one of the many free blog sites and resume their posting?
I like the idea of bloggers and online journalists as watchdogs for the mainstream media, since it appears the mainstream media sometimes fails at monitoring itself. And I am in no way opposed to supplementing versions of printed and televised news online, because it encourages deeper investigation into news stories on a medium that’s more comfortable for a growing number of Americans.
But I want to be a newspaper writer. I want the satisfaction of seeing my words in newsprint and having to flip to page 22 just to read the last two paragraphs. This is something I can’t get with a computer printout of my work.
It’s distressing to know that this form of online journalism could unseat mainstream media sometime down the road.
When I finish and post this, all that awaits me is light words on a dark screen. And where’s the satisfaction in that?