According to the video on Newseum (http://www.newseum.org/programs/future-of-news/index.html), the “massive transformation of journalism” is just beginning. The video continues to describe print journalism as in “crisis” and discusses the issue of who is trustworthy online – even referring to the “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” awards given by some websites. This issue of credibility is what I would like to discuss as it becomes more prevalent in the evolution of news. As group 2 pointed out in their presentation last week, over one half of online news consumers use their social networking sites for news. While this is just fine and dandy for social news – no one knows more about the relationship drama of Bill and Susie than Bill and Susie themselves, for example – an issue arises when one is dependent upon social networking for state and world news.
An article on http://tinyurl.com/248mt5o offers a definition of citizen journalism. One part of the definition states that citizen journalism is “independent online publications with amateurs doing original reporting.” Note that it uses the word amateurs. Citizen journalists are not professionals, nor should they be treated as if they were. Many people, however, do accept citizen journalists as professionals and trust their information wholeheartedly. So, how do we remedy this situation and bring credibility and reliance back to the professional world of news?
The movie mentioned earlier also states that “we have to reinvent ourselves and continue the revolution [of journalism].” To me, this means that we must embrace the changing world of media and conform to it so that professional journalism simply appears in different ways. Another point made by group 2’s presentation was that people want news outlets that are interactive. Most big companies have begun doing this through things such as NewsMixer. The issue that needs to be addressed now is making these professional news outlets more desired and trustworthy than the social networking sites for issues that ought to be addressed by professional news. To all those aspiring journalists out there – may we find this remedy and accept the challenge of the changing world of media and make the news business better than ever before!
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