Today, right now, as of this very second journalism is experiencing a great schism. Even with the wide history of the field the change of journalism can be felt within my short college experience of three years. The biggest impact and determining factor of journalism is one of the biggest factors in the human race, technology.
Technology has always governed journalism. From the days of the renaissance when it took months to receive messages from the new world to today, where I can tell the world of an incident this second on my cell phone.
The fast paced demanding lifestyle in which our country falls under spills onto journalism. Americans want the news fast, simple and right.
One choosing to get into this field I was unaware of the great changes that are occurring. I liked English, I liked writing, I knew that becoming an author was not an easy road so I took the more business friendly route of journalism. At the university I am a major of mass communication with a film and video minor.
Picking journalism was easy, specifying what I want to do within journalism is not. Due to newspapers and other forms of print journalism dying I decided it was better to focus on broadcast journalism. Broadcast journalism exposed me into two of the greatest things in this world, telling a story and video.
Throughout middle and high school I always enjoyed doing movies for projects, but did not have the skills or knowledge to get more into the field of video. Being a junior, and having student loans and college courses at my disposal gave me the opportunity to jump into my passion full swing.
Establishing video of a passion coincides with where journalism is going. One of the most profitable businesses in this country is the film industry. Our generation is technology driven and our generation is where journalism is headed. We would much rather hear sounds and see video to tell a story rather than read it in a newspaper or listen to it on the radio.
My experiences at the University of Maine have showed me that video is the future. While older professors are teaching through textbooks and lectures, the younger teachers are using youtube videos. Sitting in my history of mass communication lecture last semester granted me a huge epiphany. As the teacher discussed the early days of journalism from the book many students were either nt paying attention or pretending to pay attention. A remarkable thing happened when the teacher played a youtube video of the same material, every student was at full attentiveness and curious. Throughout the course videos were used to keep focus and teach successfully.
Try to access a major newspapers website, or any journalist organization and not see video on the front page. Video is the future of journalism and journalists need these skills in order to be useful.
The future of journalism depends on the fast paced society it covers, it is the reason why using sound and images are used to tell stories, it is the reason why I am using small paragraphs to write this blog entry, it saves time and it gets to the point, something we all want our news to be.
Brian,
ReplyDeleteI was previewing this post. Be sure to proof read and *read it out loud to yourself* before the deadline tomorrow. Your overall message is great, but there are errors of clarity.