Blog Post 6- challenges of journalism

The biggest problem facing journalist today is the Internet. The Internet is an ever-changing landscape that has been hard to figure out even for the most involved on the web. Things like blogs, message boards, and Twitter journalists are being drowned out by regular citizens and other sources. As regular people have more opportunities to express their opinions and to break news journalist need to find more creative ways to reach out to the people that they serve. They need to adapt to changing times by aggressively thinking of ways that they can stand out. I think one way they can do this is by marking themselves through social media platforms. Journalists have opportunities now to give their readers more insight as to how they develop stories and where they're coming from when writing stories. This can help build more of a whale fan base and allow readers to get to know the journalist more personally. It seems that early on journalist tried to fight the new media that has been being developed for several years now, but what they need to do is to engage it and figure out how to use it to their advantage. The Internet has also proved to create an additional problem of connecting with younger readers. It seems like more and more younger people have stopped reading newspapers or stopped following important news to them and are more attracted to celebrity or reality television. I think one of the main issues is that journalist's writing can often times be stuffy and hard to understand. If they would like to retract younger readers they need to figure out how to write for them. For example, using easy-to-understand language, or using metaphors that younger people can relate to. I think to often newspapers sound elitist and they become hard to follow and not engaging enough of their audience. Finally, I think another reason why journalism is struggling is because everything has become sensationalized. There seems to be an operative in the media to overblow or to quantify everything immediately instead of letting it simmer and action seeing the true impact. Because journalists tend to overblow everything they are sometimes not only get it wrong, but seem to have bias, or seem to miss the mark and it becomes hard to trust or enjoy listening to the news. I believe if the media took more of a step back instead of trying to find instant reaction it would become easier to rely on the media for the reports and easier to trust them. Much of this comes from the fact that there is high competition within reporting. However, I think as journalist do a better job of covering the news instead of trying to be the fastest to cover the news people will be more willing to follow that particular reporter or news outlet rather than getting sensationalized news even though it's fast.