Journalism in the Digital Age

I sit at my computer reading a New York Times article on the debt crisis when suddenly my phone vibrates. I receive an alert from my MSNBC news app that Amy Winehouse has been confirmed dead. Immediately I race on to Facebook to write a status about it and find that people have already been discussing it. A quick Google search leads me to multiple news articles documenting the story as it is updated in real time. We now live in a digital age; one in which the latest breaking news can be brought to us in seconds and can be easily shared with others across the world. The Internet has without question drastically changed journalism and how we consume news media, but some worry that this change may pose a serious threat to journalism, as newsroom staff cuts are deemed necessary in order to increase revenues as much of their audience and advertising migrates to new media. Some also worry about the recent loss of investment from big companies in investigative journalism; the kind that serves the people by uncovering problems in the government, business and society. I believe that the Internet has created an exciting new era of opportunity for journalists and will ultimately help a new and beneficial form of journalism develop. These new and easily accessible forms of communication can revolutionize journalism and create a more well-informed public than ever before.

In an article in Online Journalism Review by associate professor and director of the news media program at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, Rich Gordon, a grim prediction of the fate of traditional media is proposed: "Some great media businesses -- ones that delivered terrific journalism as well as solid financial returns—are going to fail within the next 10 years or be acquired by other companies. And those that survive will probably employ fewer journalists than they do today." (Gordon) I’m not denying that there is a decline in what we traditionally know as journalism, but just because newspapers and news television have fallen on financial hard times does not mean that the future of journalism is a bad one. Gordon also poses the question, “Will Internet business models support the creation of original journalism?” (Gordon) According to Gordon, developments in the past few years might just might make this a possibility, citing online advertising revenue, individual journalists using the Web to successfully market themselves, the idea of “citizen journalism”, and Yahoo’s Kevin Sites, a multimedia journalistic venture by the website, which had become hugely successful from simply publishing news taken from other sources. Gordon states that there are three reasons that the internet will help expand journalism. These are the power of publishing it gives to everyone; the simplicity of linking to other information; and the ease of finding relevant information through RSS feeds and search.

However, not everyone shares the same positive sentiments as Gordon. An article in the Philadelphia City Paper called “Schlock of the News” by Bruce Schimmel argues the idea that “interactive writers can quickly become slaves to instant ratings.” (Schimmel) Schimmel explains how many websites are driven by advertising dollars, using an example of an editor for the “Diet and Health” section of AOL saying, “Every time you click our page, views go up, we get more ad dollars, then I get promoted." He claims that journalism could easily become a medium that panders to advertisers, where journalists write for popularity rather than to better inform the people, due to the fact that content can be posted online immediately. He claims that the internet is dumbing down journalism in order to make a profit, stating that "AOL's narrowcasting encourages even the most diligent reporters to become entertainers.” (Schimmel)

While Schimmel makes some good points about corporate involvement in the world of journalism, I do not believe that journalists will let what he asserts happen. There are plenty of passionate journalists out there right now who use the Internet as their medium to report. Blogs give anyone with an opinion the ability to say anything they want. Of course this creates a lot of pointless nonsense and factual inaccuracies, but there are also quite a few bloggers already making a difference in the world of journalism. People like Johsua Marshall, Glenn Reynolds, Ana Marie Cox, and Xeni Jardin all got their start through online blogging and have provided journalism with an original voice without the backing of a major media corporation. It was online bloggers that first made an issue of Mississippi senator Trent Lott’s praise for pro-segregation 1940s senator Strom Thurmond, eventually forcing him to resign. Bloggers do not have to worry about profiting from their ventures, and can instead work on providing provocative stories and better informing the world.

Social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter can also be used as a way for news to spread. People who see an interesting or important story will often post about it on their page, thus informing more people who wouldn’t regularly read the news. News can also be reported on the spot from witnesses of events through these websites, as one Pakistani man did on his Twitter page, liveblogging the entire raid of Osama Bin Laden’s compound. YouTube is another growing source of journalism, as more and more people have started posting amateur video clips of events from around the world. The site has launched a YouTube News Feed for its users to report news, publishing journalism clips on a site called CitizenTube. The site has been used by millions to track news about the Iran election protests, Los Angeles wildfires and other events in the past. Through this site, anyone with a cellphone or video camera around the world could potentially contribute to the coverage of breaking news events. These are just a few examples of what digital media can do to help us get a much more complete understanding of everything going on the world, while at the same time getting everyone involved.

I ultimately agree with what Gordon asserts about the Internet. The digital era is still only in its infancy and we still have yet to see just what the Internet has to offer for journalism. When television first began, news broadcasts were simple, but as it matured, pioneers such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow turned it into an incredibly powerful journalistic medium. Something similar is likely to happen to the Internet in the future. The Internet provides anyone with creativity, curiosity, an interest in world events, and a desire to change the world the ability to take their ideas, stories, videos, and photos and make them available for everyone in the world to see. In terms of profit, the future of mainstream media does not look bright, but if more journalists are willing to use the Web for the benefit of informing their audience then journalism will never die. It is also true that not all of the various innovations of the Internet will exactly play out like some people hope, but in the end it will provide a revolutionary platform for journalism that will benefit democracy and society. In the words of TIME magazine editor Henry Anatole Grunwald, “Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.” People will continue to argue about what the Internet means for the future of journalism, but in the end, a desire to inform people, uncover the truth, and improve our world will always triumph.