Journalism Evolving

Erica Westley
ew991515@ohio.edu

Social Media has brought a very interesting dynamic to journalism. This dynamic is sometimes very positive, but also sometimes very negative. Since anyone has the capability of having a twitter account and the freedom of speech, it can become difficult to regulate the accuracy of people’s tweets in regards to certain news. Some say that journalism is a dying field, but this is something I completely disagree with. It is not a dying field, but a field that is going through drastic changes. As we’re entering an age of new and more elaborate technology, the way we wish to receive news is naturally going to change with the changing times.

A Huffington Post article by Thomas Kent called “A Whole New Kind of Journalism? ADissenting View” discusses how people may not get their news through the traditionally known way, but are still concerned about what is going on and relevant topics throughout the country. The latest outlets of news can range from social media outlets to traditional news companies converting to online methods. These online methods can be updated and accessed faster by the mass public.

The advantage of having online news outlets is often you can receive recent news faster than you can receive through print newspaper. The Peterson’s article, “Three charts thatexplain how U.S. journalists use social media” talks about why journalist uses Twitter so often. Many of the journalist said they used Twitter in order to share breaking news because it’s the easiest way to get out the news to the mass public. There is problems with having the ability to share news so quickly, which can include giving out errors in the information. Journalist can get so focused into being the first to get out the news, they may miss or overlook some of the information to be the original person to bring the mass public the story.

I think the best way to control social media regarding news, is to inform people how you portray yourself in social media is very important, especially for future/present journalist.

I think social media is a great way to get out news to the people, its shown to be fast and effective.  For the people that may not be a well known news organization that tweets current events, it is still very important that your tweets on certain news are intelligent and ethical.

For more information and perspective regarding social media and twitter, check out a video PBS created called “The Impact of Twitter on Journalism”. I found the video to be pretty interesting and not too long!