Learning about anything in the field of communication so far has been extremely interesting for me. And all of the classes I've taken seem to be forming a good base for whatever my future career will be in the media industry. I didn't know when I signed up for this News Writing class that it would relate so much to my current job as an editor of an online blog (AnythingDisney). "Citizen journalism"-- a new media in which citizens gather & report the news--- is finally putting a name on something that I've been doing as a hobby for years. Who knew that I was already involved in the next generation of news reporting?
And citizen journalism is highly profitable, many companies are more than willing to advertise on your page regardless of whether you have a degree or an affiliation with any news organization or company. It's drawn in my generation especially, who mostly look at television news as something their parents only watch, and newspapers as something that our grandparents read. Most of us don't trust the mainstream media, it makes much more sense to us to look to peers for our news. On Facebook people post links to interesting news stories and blogs, I have friends who regularly update news blogs, and let's face it, blogs do much more extensive coverage on issues than what the mainstream media sometimes focuses on.
For example, I couldn't go anywhere online last fall without hearing about the Occupy Wall Street movement, but whenever I turned on CNN, they were just blathering about Herman Cain or Michelle Bachman. I saw the video above posted and reposted online days before I saw it appear on TV. Citizen journalism puts the news in our hands, and we report and respond with what is relevant to us, especially when something is being neglected in the MSM.
The internet is obviously where the future of journalism lies, and blogging is only the beginning. Social media is rapidly evolving, and in the past year we witnessed multiple revolutions organize on Twitter and Facebook, and then succeed against all odds. Trending Topics on twitter are updated much faster than the news; earthquakes and other national disasters trend sometimes hours before the TV channels and days before newspapers.
(image: technorati.com)
We are taking the news into our own hands and connecting instantly, internationally with each other. Will TV news be able to keep up? I'd have to say the chances are bleak, especially with how much television in general is changing because of the internet, Netflix, and streaming. But that's a subject for a another post...
