Thanks for the write-up of my talk. I just wanted to clarify one point. When I spoke about a website not doing well if most of your traffic comes from search, I was quoting a journalist who had told me ‘if most of your traffic comes from search then you don’t have a strong brand’.

The reality is that any large site will get a large portion of its traffic from search. This is a good thing and at the Telegraph we spend a lot of time ensuring that our content can be found in search engines. However, having drawn readers in through search, we want to do everything we can to ensure they come back and that’s why it’s important to try to establish reader loyalty.

In this article I hoped to show there is a distinction between citizen input and the profession and to demonstrate how the public still needs professional journalists and that citizen journalism is not a replacement, it is an add on.

Tim, I used the term ‘pandemic of negativity’ as over the past few weeks I have listened to lectures where the lecturer explains how anyone can be a journalist and I have heard my colleagues, having listened to these lectures, raising the question as to whether there will be a role for them in ten years time. I call it a pandemic because in a similar way to the credit crunch, a little negativity or doubt projected to an audience fuels further negativity. It can be cured with a little balance and my article was designed to point out what is happening and how it wasn’t all doom and gloom for the profession. Admittedly it is perhaps a little strong, but I hope my point hasn’t been lost in my passion for the distinction to be drawn.

In response to your second point about past conventions in the dictionary, I am aware of this and I used the online dictionary to get the most up-to-date definition as possible. Definitions change but my point is that this particular definition can change but should not merge. At the moment, I think it is perhaps on the brink of merging hence why I felt it was important to clearly show the distinction now.

And your third point, I do not disagree with Clay, this is perhaps the age of the amateur. My point is that we need to make a clear distinction between amateurs and professions. As I have said above, citizen input should be an add-on not a replacement.

1) “It is spreading an unnecessary pandemic of negativity.” Can you elaborate on this a little? It sounds rather drastic and I haven’t observed this pandemic myself.

2) Dictionary definitions only ever reflect the past form of conventional wisdom.

3) According to Clay Shirky (qv) we have entered the age of the amateur (and have you looked that word up in the dictionary, by the way?).

4) I like the word “readertorial”.