Not true at all. The in depth long-form journalism that e.g. Matt Taibi does at Rolling Stone http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog cannot be done by people who have day jobs with smartphone on a street corner. And it's thousands of times more valuable than the "man bites dog" type of stories that Joe Smartphone can capture.
Another journalist friend once managed to work on something like that on his own, but only through crowdfunding.
Good journalism is expensive!
We spent a significant portion of the classes just learning how to write news items. The teacher then told us that what we were doing one day a week for six months is what full-time journalism students spend an entire year doing, and that this is much of what they'll be doing once they enter the job market.
She specifically advised those of us interested in being journalists to just get really good in our academic field, and move into journalism as 'specialists' from there.