As a soon-to-be journalism grad, I hate the "free" economy

I use a lot of "free" platforms. I use YouTube. I use Facebook. I use Google. I use Spotify. I benefit from the services they provide, I won't deny that.  I am completely onboard with the concept of technological platforms becoming "free" as user bases increase and technology improves. I am not onboard with the "free" model of journalism that Chris Anderson outlines in his pieces for WIRED.

Journalism isn't a technological platform. It's a process - and it takes a lot of time and man power. The cost of man power hardly decreases with increasing user bases (that don't pay) and improving technology. However in "Dear Malcolm: Why So Threatened?," Anderson suggests that crowdsourcing unpaid contributors for a blog, while paying a content "community" manager is a sustainable model in this "free" economy and perhaps the future of some forms of journalism.

I would like to argue that not only is this not sustainable; it's not journalism. I went to GeekDad.com, the blog Anderson uses as an example in his writing, and there is no original reporting done for the site; what is on the site is reviews, opinions and advice. While this is media content,  it is hardly providing the new information and context that serves as the basis for journalism.  If contributors are just voicing opinions, it is easy (and maybe even fun) to write on the side as an unpaid hobby. But if these contributors were required to invest a great deal of time and effort into finding new stories, finding sources and producing text, video and interactive media, I am betting that they would want compensation.

Actual information, actual reporting is worth something, but its worth is being diluted by those who see what blogs do as journalism.

For me this is increasingly frustrating as I try to find a career in the journalism field. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told, "start a blog and gain an audience," as if I can afford to write and produce journalism without being paid for an indefinite amount of time. I have a website and it displays clips from the journalism work I have done through school, through student publications, and through professional internships. I have been trained in journalism and gained experience in journalism, just as any other profession goes to school to get training. You don't expect nurses who have graduated to work for free, why should trained journalist work for nothing? Yet there is this expectation due to the loads of free (non) journalism on the web that actual journalism should be free as well. This translates into fewer and fewer jobs for trained journalists and will eventually mean that actual journalism will disappear from the internet. I hope you enjoy listicles masquerading as news because I believe that's what more and more of journalism will become in the "free" economy.