JRN 4440/FA16

Week Three

Assignment: Reading Response

2013 American Journalist in the Digital Age Key Findings

For years now, there has been a growing trend of using social media as a communication tool that connects the world and journalist are taking advantage of that. In recent studies, U.S. journalists are known to turn to social media to connect with readers and see what their competitor is up to. Well, I think a journalist relying on social media is the double-edged sword to the idea of journalism and could be helping a decline in traditional news organizations.

The first reason I’m going to make is that newsrooms are shrinking for the good and bad. Recently, downsizing in a newsroom has become a common occurrence because of the economy. Everything seems to have become too expensive and news organizations have to downgrade their staff. That does not go for just the staff, but what the organization produces to the public. When reading a newspaper, I feel like there is more ads then stories, but I know the publication has their hands tied behind their backs. The good about downsizing a newsroom is journalist have become capable of developing new techniques to producing a story. Social media plays an important role in this because I feel the world wants news that is fast and right at their fingertips.

My next reason on if journalist using social media is hurting or helping is the decrease of trying to get the information out to the public fast enough. The journalism field is very competitive because of the growing number of companies and organizations who want to be first in delivering news, especially if it’s breaking news. When online news started to become popular, paper publications had a whole new competition to worry about. The news organization have to choose if they should give their readers quick news or news that takes time to write. In my view about this situation, social media is helping the spread of difference news, but I feel it is OK to slow down and produce really great stories, no matter how long they take.

Another issue that traditional news organizations have is really reaching the mass audience. In the past, the readers were the main source of what was to be covered. A journalist’s job was to be the messenger to the people, but at some point, most people stopped listening. I think journalist using social media to reach out to the audience has been successful. My Facebook feed has tons of articles for different news sources every day and I don’t seeing that stopping anytime soon.

Social media is a tool a journalist uses now to branch out with interactive media. I find that people have short attention spans and I think the writers of the journal are right about the use of interactive media. I think videos or pictures make a journalist job easy. A journalist can also create a blog to display their writing skill or to help build their career.

The internet opened up a whole new world to journalist, but social media allows journalists to watch the competition and find out breaking news. I still like the classics and grab a newspaper whenever I can, but the internet is a great place to find the news.

There are only certain things that a traditional newspaper can do, but social media can do better. A traditional newspaper and news on social media have something in common. Both communication tools inform the public of the latest news and allows journalist to be inventive with delivering the news. The differences of the two, when it comes to making a journalist job effective, is that social media has caused newsrooms to shrink and there is a huge competitive field with online publications.