The trend lately, and it's even noticeable in print news, is to give the audience a glimpse of what goes on inside the news factory. (Well, why not? Professions from cops to cooks have been documented. Is a reality television show about reporters imminent?) The media has turned the limelight on itself, and the multimedia newsroom is no exception. (Just yesterday J.T. and I were writing and editing a news story about us online producers.)
Maybe the journalists-as-the-news trend started when the Today show began airing accounts of the lives of its own stars, like Al Roker. Or maybe it dates back to Cecil Brown of CBS Radio, who, critics claimed, wore out the "i" on his typewriter. However and whenever it started, I think the Internet is perpetuating our self-promotion and blogs are one of our vehicles. It's convenient to write about ourselves and kind of gratifying. We've never been able to enjoy this freedom and opportunity to write about ourselves before. But are we changing the definition of news?
Cookies, "most visited" or "most e-mailed" tallies and polls tell us what the audience is looking at. Even dictionary.com has a "most common sites" for a specific word link.
Much of the audience gravitates to Web news that is sensational (think Madonna-Britney-Christina kiss or Janet Jackson), gory and novel . Like in the old days of yellow journalism, Web journalism has provided a medium where gossip and facts intermingle freely. Of course, considering the season, a big chunk of Web news is dedicated to politics. So in some ways, news has stayed the same.
But as the medium changes, so does the message. With online news, what's news at 10 a.m. may not be news one hour later. Many of us find ourselves waking up to go to work for a virtual machine that keeps evolving and an audience that keeps wanting something different. The procedures change daily as we innovate convergence at the University of Kansas and around the globe. Maybe it's a good thing we're documenting it all.
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