There has been a major shift to digital news reporting in the past several years that has created a lack of trust between the news media and its audience. Due to the growth of new media (Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) more and more people have become “journalists” without any formal training. Having said that, these “new media journalists” are failing to understand that there’s a code of ethics when reporting the news. The number one lesson to learn about reporting is to take responsibility of your writing. This lesson is being taken for granted so much so, that legitimate news agencies have been caught copying information from new media journalists who have gotten the story incorrect, and gotten into big trouble from it just because they wanted to be the first to report the news.
With a Social Media environment around us, one could say that it is difficult to find any kind of news happening within my area, however how one reports the news is certainly changing. When I look on the Internet, I find more opinion than reporting. We use channels such as Facebook and Instagram to make our point. We use Twitter to showcase our headline and direct our readers to our story. Then, we use blogs for just about everything nowadays.
Food – this is what I see blogs used more and more frequently for. It seems that everyone wants to make a Food blog and either talk about recipes or their favorite places to eat. Even if these bloggers are not talking about Hollywood gossip, they too become celebrities just because they are talking about food. They become respected in the area for which they blog about restaurants and are welcomed in hoping that the restaurant receives a good review; or if they are budding chefs and post some great recipes, they too can become celebrities in the food world.
What the future of journalism holds depends on those who still want to be journalists. Mass Communication students, researchers and more should take careful note. Although the delivery method is evolving, I believe that the grass roots idea of being a journalist will always remain the same. As the video The Future of Journalism states, we are in a digital age. Whether the delivery is local news, nationwide news, or even as small as a one city area news, what we rely on such as newspapers and television is evolving into something new, different, and in many ways, exciting. It presents opportunities out there for those who want to become journalists and had very few outlets to practice their specialty in. With the evolution of news delivery, more jobs in journalism can now open presenting new ways to present the news in an ethical manner, but also a fun one.
However, one can debate today “what is best in the industry of journalism – to be first or to be correct?” In the industry of journalism, it’s readers that make you powerful. The larger your audience, the larger your revenue through advertising because you can guarantee that an ad will be viewed more with you than anywhere else.
Consumers are honestly a funny bunch. I believe that they can be split 50/50 in the question of being first or right. Honest journalism is a practice that should be expected always. However consumers also enjoy controversy and they eat it up when someone is backed against the wall. Now with the social media revolution, consumers can also be journalists and publicly give their two cents about this or any story out there.
How this brings a major shift to digital news reporting is that it creates more outlets to actually share the news with the masses. I believe and hope that this also brought about more responsibility in the way we present the news. And that there is more comprehension about the fact that reporting the story first is not always in the best interest, but rather in how accurate the story we present is far more worth its weight in gold.
