It's a strange beast.
Journalism evokes a wide range of emotions from people who know the profession and people who simply read about it. It's been described as wonderful, evil, biased, unprofessional, intelligent, lazy, yellow and an assortment of other adjectives.
The bottom line is that journalism has been there from the beginning. It started as word of mouth and storytelling. It transformed into leaflets and tablets in later years, progressing to newspapers, magazines and electronic media at its present stage.
But at its base, what is journalism?
Is it the process of taking events and transcribing them into stories people who don't care may still want to read? Is it the attempt to make money from stories people can now read for free online? Is it an attempt to sway the general public to believe what's best for them is what you say it is?
No. Journalism is simply information.
The industry as we know it is struggling. Life is getting busier every day and people are pretending they don't have time to read anymore (although they watch three hours of the same episode of SportsCenter). The economy is struggling so people are cutting back on things they think they don't need. They cut back on things to save time. We are slowly become a world of headline-readers. Very few people have or take the time to get the whole story.
As a result, our society is becoming more and more blind to the real issues in the world. People are turning a desensitized eye to important issues abroad and at home. It's slowly become a world more concerned with celebrity and reality television than nuclear threats or impending wars. Even in the current state, journalists, the few who are left and still enjoy their jobs, are getting a bad wrap. People are becoming more critical of what they read and more harsh in their responses. Check out the comments toward Jason Wren's dad to get an understanding of this idea.
Maybe people need to be more critical of themselves first.
Journalism is simply information. It is transference of relevant detail from one entity to the next. It is important to all parties that become involved in the process and it pushed our lives forward into tomorrow.
The profession as we know it may be dying, but information will always be around.
And while it is, the world will still need journalism.
Journalism evokes a wide range of emotions from people who know the profession and people who simply read about it. It's been described as wonderful, evil, biased, unprofessional, intelligent, lazy, yellow and an assortment of other adjectives.
The bottom line is that journalism has been there from the beginning. It started as word of mouth and storytelling. It transformed into leaflets and tablets in later years, progressing to newspapers, magazines and electronic media at its present stage.
But at its base, what is journalism?
Is it the process of taking events and transcribing them into stories people who don't care may still want to read? Is it the attempt to make money from stories people can now read for free online? Is it an attempt to sway the general public to believe what's best for them is what you say it is?
No. Journalism is simply information.
The industry as we know it is struggling. Life is getting busier every day and people are pretending they don't have time to read anymore (although they watch three hours of the same episode of SportsCenter). The economy is struggling so people are cutting back on things they think they don't need. They cut back on things to save time. We are slowly become a world of headline-readers. Very few people have or take the time to get the whole story.
As a result, our society is becoming more and more blind to the real issues in the world. People are turning a desensitized eye to important issues abroad and at home. It's slowly become a world more concerned with celebrity and reality television than nuclear threats or impending wars. Even in the current state, journalists, the few who are left and still enjoy their jobs, are getting a bad wrap. People are becoming more critical of what they read and more harsh in their responses. Check out the comments toward Jason Wren's dad to get an understanding of this idea.
Maybe people need to be more critical of themselves first.
Journalism is simply information. It is transference of relevant detail from one entity to the next. It is important to all parties that become involved in the process and it pushed our lives forward into tomorrow.
The profession as we know it may be dying, but information will always be around.
And while it is, the world will still need journalism.
Leave a comment