Journalism is dead. Long live the journalist! Contradictory, isn't it? Hardly.

Journalism, as we've known it for over a century, is long gone. But the role of journalist - in recording events, in building opinions, in presenting facts - is here to stay.

There is no other profession today which is facing so much change as journalism. Really, this seismic shift is akin to an engineer waking up one fine morning to discover that Newton's Law of Gravity no longer applies.

In times of great change, there's bound to be some confusion. So it's not surprising that journalists are still trying to make sense of the Internet revolution which threatens to smother us.

Which brings us to the perception that journalism is under siege. But in reality, it's media companies which are under threat, not so much journalism. True, the fate of the two are intertwined. After all, most journalists work for media organisations.

However, most media companies exist to make a profit and increasingly, their profit margins are being squeezed. Advertisers are migrating online. Worse still, new media upstarts include those which are not just strictly content providers - Google, YouTube, MySpace and Flickr to name a few.

Clearly, the media landscape is being irreversibly altered. There is growing fragmentation of information. Old media no longer has a complete monopoly on the truth. To top this, those who were once spectators have now invaded the pitch and are demanding to join in the game too - giving rise to the new phenomenon of 'citizen journalism'.

To survive, some old media will have to merge. That process has already begun in Malaysia. Some others will have to bite the dust. But newspapers, in one form or another, will remain just like their old media cousins - television and radio.

Citizen journalists

More troubling, however, is the idea that everyone can be a journalist.

Take Malaysiakini . For all intents and purposes, we're not journalists. That's if you ask the government. We need the 'official' press cards from the Information Ministry, and our application was rejected many years ago.

Nevertheless, we earn our journalist stripes by respecting the rules and principles of the game. Malaysiakini prides itself as a new media fueled by a healthy dollop of good old journalism.

Politicians are fond to dismiss journalists as self-appointed critics. But unlike politicians who have to face their voters only every four or five years, journalists are judged everyday.

More recently, we were joined by the new kids on the cyberblock - bloggers. Like us, they too will have to build their credibility.

There's no doubt that bloggers have played a very important role in improving journalism. They help check bad journalism. They pinpoint mistakes and inaccuracies. They provide alternative viewpoints.

But bloggers will have to live up to the very standards they demand from journalists - in getting the facts right, in exercising similar discipline in the verification process, in not peddling hearsay as news.

Dan Gillmor, the author of 'We, the Media' and widely considered the father of citizen journalism, is well aware of this. In a debate I had with him at a media event last year, he conceded that there is just as much irresponsible blogging as there is bad journalism. Correction. Perhaps more.

Gillmor is today dedicating much of his effort to help improve the standards in blogosphere.

Bad blood

Yes, there has been a lot of bad blood between bloggers and journalists. It's time to put an end this war.

Would we want to live in a world where there are only bloggers and no journalists? Surely not.

After all, everyone has an opinion and many do-it-yourself journalists can really do it much better than the so-called lords of the profession. Yet most independent accounts of local and global events have come from professional journalists. It is imperative that these continue to come from them.

On the other hand, would we want to live in a world populated by only journalists and no bloggers? Again, no.

In the few cases where bloggers have helped break news, it was then often left to journalists to follow up. It is this kind of partnership which can push an opaque government to come into the clear.

Consider the case of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's 'private' jet . Bloggers were the first to raise the issue. But it was journalists who took it to the next level by pressing Abdullah on the matter.

It is this sort of synergistic partnership that will invariably shape our new media world.

All said, so long as journalists and bloggers stay true to their craft - and hold dear to the principles demanded by the profession - we should be okay. So you can say it again: Long live the journalist!