Journalism turns a new page
May 4, 2017
In today’s society, it is easy to fall into the habit of turning on the TV to listen to tonight’s news, or go on Twitter to get the latest information about what is happening in the world. As this becomes a reality, people lose the authenticity that a newspaper brings, but they possibly gain something valuable. Only time will tell how these changes will effect people in the future.
It is no surprise that technology has changed how people get news. Instead of waiting for the weekly paper, people can find news with a couple clicks on a computer or by tuning into an online channel. In addition to this, people have less patience with their news. When a news story or broadcast is hard to find, people will not put a lot of time into locating it.
“I think that more stories now are not life changing or hard hitting. A lot of them just seem very surface level and are kept under 140 characters. This forces journalists to try to create interest in a shortened way which is different than in the past when a couple stories were on each page of a newspaper,” said junior Ava Pagnucco.
News is also a lot easier to find on social media, rather than going to a local news stand and picking up the latest issue. With the growing popularity of Twitter, Youtube and other social media platforms, people can look at news from their phones.
“I like using Twitter because it doesn’t take too long to read and is sort of filtered down into topics I think are interesting. It is also cool to see different opinions about the news stories. People get a chance to express how they feel more because you can just tweet in response to the news article,” said junior Peter Kast.
“Anyone can look up anything on their phone and get a news story in a matter of seconds. Also there are so many apps that people can use that are free like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram,”said Pagnucco.
With the popularity of television, broadcast journalism is now the preferred way to get the news. Tuning into the morning or late night news is something a lot of people have built into their daily routine.
“TV is easier and more convenient and if you don’t care about the story that is shown you can change to another station quickly and hear that news. You get to pick and choose the news you want to hear, ” said Pagnucco.
There is also a new fad in journalism called “fact-checking.” With the increase of fake news from the 2016 election to now, readers are constantly needing to verify whether or not a story is true.
“I get some of my news from Twitter or sometimes Snapchat news stories but that news is pretty fake most of the time I think. Today a lot of the news isn’t always as important and news companies are just putting it out to get money or to entertain people. The headlines might not be super accurate but it gets people to click on them,” Kast said.
There is a high demand for online news due to how easy it is to access; surely it will continue to surpass newspapers and other paper form of news.
Josh Mathwig • Nov 13, 2017 at 6:06 pm
Your opening paragraph focuses on the topic nicely and creates an idea to elaborate on. Your follow-up paragraph adds even more detail, without being too much. Following quote gives a nice personal opinion on the subject.