As both a vocalist and a journalist, I sometimes feel like I’m being torn in half. I mean, how different could two fields get? As a vocalist I work for many hours thinking about my voice, my lyrics, my interpretation. I’m completely immersed in my own little operatic world.
Then I walk from the Fine Arts complex to Arjona and I’m suddenly taught to forget myself and my biases. Instead, I need to explore the world from everyone else’s viewpoint, keeping my own voice and interpretation out of the story with very exceptions. (This being one of those exceptions!)
This class blurs the lines between my two majors. The Internet has revolutionized the way we share information. Instead of a few journalists putting news into relatively unbiased, unchangeable bundles of newspaper for the masses to read, the masses can take the news and run with it. Web 2.0 sites like Wikipedia are prime examples of everyman creating and distributing information. It’s truly a revolution for the general population. But, as we’re all banking on a stable career in journalism, how should we feel about the entire computer-population becoming pseudo-journalists?
Wikipedia homepage
I think we should welcome them. While I enjoy the new subjectivity and individualism of the Internet (i.e. this blog), the population will still need fact-based, objective journalists to filter all of this information. This video of a woman ranting about rainbow-inducing chemicals in the water is quite entertaining, but demonstrates the danger of letting everyone share their “news”.
The “rainbow conspiracy” proves that the new wave of citizen journalists will be lacking objectivity and credibility. Luckily, journalists are largely defined by those qualities, which carves out an important niche in the Internet-era media.
I think journalists today have the best of both worlds. Our objectivity and credibility is still in demand to both create and filter news. At the same time, we have incredible tools at our disposal from digital cameras, flip video cameras, and the entire computer-population that can supply photos, videos and information from virtually any place on the globe.
As we talked about the future of journalism in class today, I agreed with my classmates that saw new websites like The Daily Beast as the journalism of the future. The Daily Beast features videos, discussion boards, links, and everything else the public could want. I for one am pretty excited to get started!
Daily Beast home page
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2 Comments
November 19, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I agree. I think it’s great that people can do their own thing with the help of the Internet, but until they do it professionally, it only harms journalism.
November 19, 2008 at 8:29 pm
I agree that there is a danger posed by the Internet allowing anyone to share “news,” like the woman who made the “Rainbow Conspiracy” video. That’s why genuine journalists should always be needed; people who are properly trained, credible and objective professionals. Indeed, this is an exciting time to be getting into journalism, at a time when everything is changing and we can be a part of that change.