Journalists and their communities: dinner won’t be served at 18.30

The relationship between journalists and their readers has changed. Once upon a time journalists wrote and readers read. Nowadays the reader can write to (or about) the journalist and the journalist can (should?) reply to the reader. So what happens when the journalist’s audience is his “community” rather than his readership and when the former readers have metamorphized into fans and/or sharp-eyed and pitiless reviewers? How has the public perception of the role of journalists changed now that the journalists themselves have become the subject of debate online?