Everybody’s writing, but there’s a great need for good writers and reporters who can dig up data and help people make sense of it.

That’s the conclusion by Robert Niles in his latest post in the Online Journalism Review.

There’s no longer any use in merely teaching people to write to a formula and conform to a specific stylebook. While those skills had enough value a generation ago for an individual to build a career, the new, hyperliterate media marketplace has rendered those skills – in isolation – as practically worthless.

He says that journalists who wish to continue earning a living from their work must either be superb storytellers, excellent reporters or have specialized knowledge.

There are a lot of writers out there, he says, but few “have the expertise to discover and analyze fresh information of interest to those audiences.”

Many folks will be able to report the news when it happens in front of them, but there remains great market value in knowing how to dig up news when it’s not out in the open.