Some of the posts will be "greatest hits" of earlier posts; others will be brand new. So here are some questions to ponder.
Are newspapers a dying breed? It would seem so. As we've discussed in class and as chapter 4 in your textbook points out, traditional newspapers are fighting to survive and scrambling to adjust to new technology to meet the needs of a new generation of readers who are more likely to get their news from an iPod or cell phone.
On the other hand, journalism itself isn't dying. Only its mode of delivery is changing and adapting. Click here to read a recent Time magazine article about the closing of The Ann Arbor News. It's not just the story of another newspaper closing its doors. What makes The Ann Arbor News story unique is that, unlike many other newspapers, The A2 News was not forced to stop its presses. Instead, it deliberately shut down so that it could launch a new online model. What do you think of its decision?
What about the trend of citizen journalism? These days, anyone can post anything on the Internet. As we saw in the For Neda documentary, ordinary citizens as well as journalists were able to use cell phones and social networking sites like Twitter to report news that would have otherwise been suppressed by the Iranian government. While the digital revolution has enabled us to have incredible opportunities and resources at our fingertips, it has also spawned problematic trends. How, for example, do we sift through it all? How will young people, in particular, know the difference between legitimate news sources and biased or unsupported propaganda? There's a lot of garbage out there.
Does the world still need professionally trained journalists? As Sarah Palin would say, you betcha. While it's wonderful that anyone can snap pictures of breaking news, for example, and post them on the web, it would be foolish or even dangerous to abandon journalism's watchdog role to the bloggers and citizen journalists of the world. Read these two articles from Time magazine to consider two different viewpoints.
Click here to read "It's all about us". Then click here to read "Enough about you".
Photos courtesy of Time. These images appear under the legal concept of Fair Use in copyright law. Fair use allows the reproduction of copyrighted material for certain purposes without obtaining permission and without paying a fee or royalty. Purposes permitting the application of fair use generally include review, news reporting, teaching, or scholarly research.
I thought the articles in a way contradicted themselves as one was promoting individual journalism and the other explained how it was necessary for journalism to exist as to keep the people informed on what they need to know.
ReplyDeleteBoth of the articles talked about how the internet is changing the way news is delivered, and I agree. I don't know what will happen with the reporting of news in the future. Everyone needs to know about news. In the long run, it won't matter how it is delivered, as long as it is.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I feel that Mark Felt really was a patriot. I see how someone could get the idea that he was a traitor, but if you really think about it, he was more of a patriot because he loved his country enough to want to fix it. If it was not for Mark Felt, most of the information that brought the conspiracy theory to life would not have been known at all and the people involved in it would not have been rightfully punished.
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