I’ve been picking up a lot of increased chatter echoing the notion that the crowd—bloggers, Twitterers, and so forth—are poised to render the professional journalism unnecessary. These screeds generally decry journalism’s shortcomings and argue that the existence of so many observers, each passionate about their own interests, will produce better reporting.

Max Kalehoff recently cited Eric Burns, author of All the News That’s Unfit to Print suggesting that there has never been a golden age of journalism because of, in short, all the bad reporting that occurred. But Burns—evidently responding to Thomas Jefferson’s assertion that “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”—added:

One of the reasons that the republic is not imperiled by irresponsible journalism is that we have had such an explosion in journalistic outlets—yes, we???re losing newspapers but we???re certainly gaining on the Internet ???- that irresponsible journalism is going to be detected today more easily than it ever was before.

Burns’ quote doesn’t quite definitively suggest that bloggers and other citizen reporters can replace professional journalism. Dave Winer, on the other hand, never a fan of journalism, has a podcast titled “Rebooting the News” (co-presented with PressThink blogger Jay Rosen) in which he repeatedly asserts that old models are failing. Not old models of publishing, mind you, but reporting itself. In a post from just a couple months ago, Winer wrote: “Why journalism is dead: The sources got blogs, or they’re using Twitter.”

Listen to enough of these voices and you’d think public relations practitioners could drop any media relations efforts at all, given the faded influence and importance of the press. It probably wouldn’t change any zealot’s mind to point out that the public still puts tremendous credence in what the media produces, well above bloggers and others (like me) who express ourselves through social channels.

To Burns’ claim that journalism has had no golden age, well, nobody ever said a “golden age” meant perfection. It just means that the activity or skill under discussion was at its peak. For example, most film historians consider 1939 to represent the golden age of cinema. It was an amazing year, featuring films like “Gone With the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Destry Rides Again,” “Goodbye Mr. Chips,” “Gunga Din,” “The Hound of the Bakservilles,” “Beau Geste,” “Dark Victory,” “Drums Along the Mohawk,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Ninotchka,” “Stagecoach” and “Wuthering Heights.” But Hollywood churned out a lot of drek in that golden age, as well.

Under this definition, there certainly was a golden age of journalism, when despite biases, mistakes, lapsed ethics, and other bad behavior, newspapers and TV cranked out some remarkable stories with huge impacts. That journalists have inherent biases doesn’t negate this body of work, despite the fact that bias is often touted as an obstacle to great journalism. While everybody has biases, journalists are trained to strive for objectivity, which is a far different thing than actually being objective, which most people wrongly assert is journalism’s claim.

One of the crowning achievements of the golden age of journalism is the reporting on Watergate by a couple members of the Washington Post’s junior reporting staff, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, chronicled well in their book, “All the President’s Men,” and the subsequent 1976 movie.

To all those who believe the crowd can replace journalism, watch that movie again. In about two hours, you’ll learn a lot:

• There was a lot of mind-numbing grunt work that went into their reporting, days spent poring over records, making phone calls, following up leads. This work is drudgery beyond compare, something not a lot of bloggers and Twitterers are prepared to engage in.
  
• Much of that grunt work cost money for travel and other expenses. The entity that paid Woodward and Bernstein to be part of their staff also funded the investigation. Few bloggers have those kinds of resources at their disposal. Heck, few bloggers have the time to devote to a story, given that blogging is an avocation, not a full-time paying job.
  
• The original story was nothing that would catch most people’s attention. Bloggers cover what they’re passionate about, not stories they’re assigned or items that crop up on their beats.
• The journalists were meticulous about checking their sources. A lot of that drugery came in trying to get verification from independent sources. Most bloggers will post their findings with no verification at all. (One colleague was mightily embarrassed when he blogged a story that wasn’t true. He could have learned it wasn’t true with a single phone call but, because he’s a blogger and not a journalist, that call never even occurred to him.)
  
• Woodstein (as Woodward and Bernstein came to be known) were guided by older, more experienced journalists, including Ben Bradlee, Harry M. Rosenfeld, and Howard Simons. Few bloggers have mentors to show them the ropes, suggest sources to whom they should talk, and guide them in their investigations. Further, few bloggers have editors who hold them to any standards.
  
• Their credentials got Woodstein access to people and records most of us wouldn’t even begin to know how to find.
  
• While there is an increased amount of first-coverage emerging from the social media space, most blog posts still analyze, critique, or comment on content produced originally by professional journalists.

The bottom line: Professional journalism is still sorely needed and won’t be replaced by social media. Instead, they will co-exist, complement one another, and ultimately produce a new ecosystem of news in which both forms of reporting play an integral part. The notion that bloggers eliminate the need for voices like Seymour Hersch, Ernie Pyle, or Edward R. Murrow (go rewatch “Harvest of Shame” and tell me anybody without training and professional standards could duplicate it.)

Where great journalism will be practiced remains an open question. Pro Publica, former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger’s venture, has a pool of reporters who are assigned to investigative stories with a particular focus, shining “a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.” One Pro Publica story, on the lack of resources available to contract military personnal injured in Iraq, was published by the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, several newspapers are trying the online only route as their print businesses fail (the Tucson Citizen being the latest to go this route, the end of its print run just today). Other models are also being explored.

I’m confident that one or more models ultimately will prove effective and the rigor and professionalism journalists bring to the table will continue to provide a valuable mix to the enlarged world of news coverage. I hope I’m right. Without it—despite the smug assertions by bloggers that they can pick up the mantle and deliver us to a true golden age of journalism—we’re sunk without it.

And to this of us working in PR, keep improving those media relations skills. The need for them isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.