Gatekeepers need to find new value when the fences have blown away

Teh Buttry Diary reporting:
The gatekeeper days of journalism were fun. But they’re over. And they weren’t as good as we remember them.
In a Facebook discussion today, Arkansas State journalism professor Jack Zibluk wrote, “By abandoning the gatekeeper role, I believe you are abandoning the profession.”
I replied: “Jack, no one abandoned the gatekeeper role. It became irrelevant when the fences blew away.”
Jack asked me to elaborate:

If journalism and journalists are no longer gatekeepers, then what ARE we? Nobody I know of has made a cohesive explanation of what our role is any more in society.

I initially begged off, saying I might blog about gatekeepers in a week or two. But another gatekeeper discussion on Jack’s Facebook wall and an exchange of private Facebook messages prompted me to blog now...
....But for better or worse, as the fences blew away, journalism has changed forever. We don’t compete with just another newspaper or two and a few local TV stations. People can get their news from a seemingly endless selection of blogs and social media accounts, some of them from independent journalists with the same standards we have, some from newsmakers trying to cover themselves (some to spin the news, some to provide legitimate journalism in areas we traditionally undercovered), some of them from the general public.
In a February address to the Canadian Journalism Foundation, John Paton, my boss, explained the realities that Digital First Media if facing:

We have accepted we are no longer the old-fashioned agenda-setters or gatekeepers of information for our communities...

http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/gatekeepers-need-to-find-new-value-when-the-fences-have-blown-away/#more-8074