Just play those words back again: everyone can be a journalist. No they can’t. If they could, publishers wouldn’t still be turning away entry-level job applicants in their droves and offering such paltry starting salaries because there’s such intense pressure to get into the profession. Bloggers are not journalists just because they blog. But they are starting to show some daft traits.

This is a quick post about something that has been niggling me for a while. Yes like many I find churnalism particularly sickly, even if it is a quick route to output for lazy PRs. But the rise of blogger egotism is an equally damning facet of how media fragmentation is causing weak spots to bubble up.

Hypocrite, I hear you cry! Here he is on a blog that is plainly all about driving web traffic poking the finger at bloggers over editorial flimsiness. Well, I ask for nothing from writing a blog other than that anyone who reads it and agrees or disagrees with the points it raises has the gumption to come out and say so.

What I am increasingly taking objection to are the bloggers getting an over-inflated opinion of themselves to the extent that they think they have a right to throw their weight around and make crass demands of the organisations that they write about. There are, of course, many bloggers who do an excellent job with informed commentary, sound analysis and pithy copy that is every bit as readable as mainstream media. Others, though, seem to have let their egos get the better of them.

Take the examples of several approaches I’ve had recently from bloggers wanting to write about certain things. The approach may be commercially sound, citing reader numbers, site traffic and the like. But the pitch can be so heavy-handed they read like a naive journalist who has just arrived at a national and been given a taste of what they perceive to be the power of the press. Yet much more brazen. The inference, rarely subtle, is that if you pay me to write something or treat me well, it will get in front of a big and valuable audience because I and what I write are so desperately important. And please see below for the cost structure.

Such bloggers need to calm down and wise up. Blogging has emerged as an important part of a changing media landscape. But if you throw your weight around to this extent, it will be a road to nowhere. Media has to be respected and trusted, not just ‘consumed’, to be influential.

Bloggers need to avoid egotism.

Journalists need to avoid churnalism.

Bloggers should avoid falling into the trap of having egos as big as journalists and journalists should avoid shoving out tatty cut and paste copy just because they have a forum for doing so.

Please do take issue with this, leave comments or post your own views. Even if they’re of the ‘oooh look what you’ve done, you’ve upset some bloggers’ variety.

But in recent weeks, it has been increasingly dawning on me that not only is journalism gripped by a commercial crisis, it has an arguably bigger problem – it is divided over attitudes of technology. A crisis of conscience (more like a crisis of nonsense IMHO).

The root of the issue is that journalism as we know it is dying. But that is not happening because the world doesn’t want news, features and analysis. It is happening because too many publishers have not moved quickly enough to embrace new media, and all-too-often they have taken a primitive, kneejerk approach to how they do so. Like trying to cure a seriously wounded animal by giving it a new handbag.

Journalism is now split, typically, between grizzled hacks bemoaning the problems the industry has but refusing to open their minds to how it can change, and journalists who understand much of how technology can change journalism, but are tarred with being experimentalists.

The latest example is Ari Goldman, a lecturer at New York’s prestigious Columbia University journalism school, declaring fxxk new media. Ari, I am not an early adopter of technology and remained sceptical about social media for some time, but I strongly suspect it will be new media fxxking you.

In today’s Guardian, Polly Toynbee appears to be calling for Government money to be spent salvaging local newspapers. Yes, and while we’re at it, why not given the hacks early retirement on fat pensions? How about a Porsche for good measure?

Bailing out failing newspapers would be throwing good (and scarce) money after bad. What local newspapers in the UK need is not a lifeline, it’s a wake-up call: they’re getting one with the chill winds now blowing through newsrooms, and hopefully it won’t be too late for the good ones to change themselves into businesses with a future.

In a fast-changing world, you have to be worth what you’re charging and offer a compelling product. Many newspapers have not changed their fundamental business premise since the 1800s. I could wax lyrical about journalism’s challenges here, but let me just make a quick point about local newspapers, given I cut my teeth on them.

The media business model is grounded in getting people to want appealing content, and selling marketing openings around it. That can continue, it just must change drastically in order to exploit and align with new media that has emerged.

Just because the internet has made international and national news accessible in the blink of an eye doesn’t mean that local news isn’t just as appealing to the consumer – if not more so. The pub planning application in my street caused what verged on a citizens’ revolt. We didn’t have a truly local newspaper to cover it, but if ‘the story’ had unfolded online and the content was of sufficient quality, I bet most of my neighbours would have paid for it.

My first editor told me on my first day as a hack that the teeniest, tiniest things can be what upset, inspire, frighten or shock people – and therefore make a story. I covered many a parish council sub-committee meeting wondering what he meant. Recently, it has dawned on me: grants for playground improvements are not Fleet Street, but they are my street.

Journalism has a fantastic opportunity to reinvent itself and capitalise on the appetite for content. But first it has to close the divide between the nay-sayers and modern media advocates, or it will continue to be its own worst enemy.