What’s Happening to Journalism? = How is technology changing the way we receive our news?

Where do you go for your news? You couldn’t make it to the big game tonight but want to know who won. Where do you go for the highlights? The Internet? The school’s website? Facebook a friend? Twitter? The radio? A news blog? The local paper? The nightly news?

It is happening before our very eyes… “Journalism has been going through several major technological changes during the past few decades. The pace of these changes is quickening now, altering the practice of the profession as never before. These changes, which encompass a wide range of activities from news gathering to dissemination, are bringing many benefits. At the same time, the profession faces some negative impacts too.” cyberjournalist.org

So, let’s talk about this… What are some of the benefits that technology has brought to journalism? What are some of the negative impacts that technology may have on journalism? How should journalists keep up with these changes?

Change Is Good "The new technology has created the opportunity for us to have a direct relationship with people in the community and begin to draw them into our process, make them smarter consumers of it and also make them potential producers of it whenever they are where the action is." Bill Kovach

News Is Happening Now Technology has made it so that reporters can update the news as it is happening. They no longer have to wait until deadline the next day to report it. Photographers are capturing images and videos and send them out to the world with a single click. Technology has made news immediate and our social networking system has come to expect this sort of immediacy. Multi-media news reporting allows for reaction and interaction between the reporter and audience.

The Online News Revolution? If you have a computer, a video camera, a cell phone, or a digital camera you can post anything on the Internet. But is it accurate? Is the information you get from the Internet always truthful?

Citizen Journalism People are capturing amazing images on their cell phones and posting them online. They are reporting reality and exposing truths. But are they journalists? Consider the amateur cell phone video of the brutal killing of Neda Agha-Soltan during the Iranian elections that won the prestigious George Polk Award in Journalism. “This award celebrates the fact that, in today's world, a brave bystander with a cell phone camera can use video sharing and social networking sites to deliver the news.” John Darton. Click here to read more

Multi-Media Story Telling You are at the big Homecoming game. What can you do to inform the public about the game? Send a Facebook update about who won. Tweet the highlights, although you only get 140 characters per Tweet. Take a video (with your cell phone, even) and post it online as soon as you get home. Blog your favorite moments. Stay up late and write an article and get it into the school paper by next week’s deadline. However, by then it will be old news.

Check out some cool forms of multi-media storytelling… Click here to see the NYTimes Photo Stories of 1 in 8 Million People in the city. Click here to see MSU’s Student Magazine Online The student publication, The Feather, does online reporting, podcasts, videos, photo stories. Voice Thread Click here for ideas on how to report with photos

So, where do we go from here? What are your ideas about our publication? Talk with a partner about your ideas for our publication. Share your ideas with the class. Why is online reporting better/worse than print media? For your homework, find a front page news story on a current event (from a major publication.) Find a blog update and Wikipedia entry on the same event. Complete the worksheet on how the event is reported differently in each publication. We will share these in class tomorrow.