New Territory for Journalism

Hunter Graffice
hg551416@ohio.edu

As technology continues to advance and media moves toward digital, it's important to notice the changes coming with it.

Some platforms in digital media journalism are completely shifting the format of traditional journalism. Sites like Buzzfeed have gained enormous criticism from other more traditional journalism sources for being fake or promoting surface-level stories. Yet, Buzzfeed has grown into a huge news organization and captured the attention of the younger generations.

Image courtesy of Buzzfeed

If you ask members of the younger generation, a majority of them would say they at least know of or use Buzzfeed's quizzes when they're bored. They also probably know about their popular series like celebrities playing with puppies while answering questions or their "Worth It" series on Youtube.

The "Worth It" series focuses on finding the best value for a certain food and it has been a smash success. Each video gets more than 5 million views and has created an engaging, authentic series for its audience. Ideas and non-traditional formats of journalism such as video series and quizzes may be scoffed at, but the numbers don't lie. The videos are enormous sources of revenue for Buzzfeed and have completely shaped the company into a pretty dominant force.

The success of the videos is likely because Buzzfeed knows their audience. They know that younger generations are using sites such as Youtube or Twitter, platforms Buzzfeed uses to curate content and attract their audience. By using these new digital methods, they have beaten other more traditional platforms and established a strong presence in journalism despite criticism from traditional newspapers.

However, this all comes with a price. The New York Times was a specific example in delivering content in a way that became morphed. The original wording of the article made it seem like Hillary Clinton had committed illegal acts herself using a private email server. This was untrue and the wording was meant to convey a mishandling of the investigation, but it instead incriminated Clinton.

Image courtesy of The New York Times

The error wasn't fixed for two days, and even then the damage had been done. The New York Times issued a correction, but right-wing media and supporters had ran with it. Such misinformation is incredibly dangerous, especially considering Clinton's email servers were one of the most discussed issues in the 2016 election. When making a mistake like that, it could change the course of something as important as a presidential election and subsequently, American history.

The best way to combat this is to ensure transparency. Whether it is making the "track changes" visible on a page so readers can see what is marked up on a page or emailing subscribers to a certain article that the article was updated/corrected. In both ways, readers would be able to see the process going into the article and make sure they are reading correct and up to date information. Of course, the damage may have already been done, but correcting it in a transparent way could prevent further misinformation.  In an age with such ease of access to digital media, there is no excuse to not employ transparency and build trust with our readers. Otherwise, the effects could be disastrous for us all.