Friday, March 20, 2009

Here lies journalism as we used to know it!

I never, ever thought that I would be a witness to the utter fall of journalism, especially when I entered this degree a mere two years ago. I entered this field because I figured newspapers weren't ever going to change so my career would be one of the stable ones. Boy was I misled!

I can't help but think, that like it or not, each one of us as citizens had a hand in this. As Americans today we are so used to having things come at us fast, and the faster the better. Why would news be any different. People aren't going to subscribe to the paper to read about news they read the day before, ten minutes after it actually happened. But, I do agree 100 percent with Arie, there are just certain skills and questions that journalists know how to ask that regular citizens don't quite understand.

I hate to say I really don't see this turning around when the economy does. The most people who read the newspapers are of the older generation. As the older generation dies, so do the papers. Along with their deaths, the Internet continues to rise and gain in popularity. We would be lost without the Internet, but sadly, not without newspapers. The Internet can fill the gaps of newspapers, but not the other way around. It is sad to see our profession dwindling away.

1 comment:

  1. Very clever title, probably my favorite of the semester. I agree with you about the fast paced nature of our society, people want todays news now. And papers just cant make that kind of speed. What I fear greatly about the death of the papers is that your ability to diversify your sources of news is greatly inhibited, and we all know that less news sources means less information. That is what scares me.

    ReplyDelete