Oct 21 2010
Professional Journalist or Average Joe? Response 8
This week I throughly enjoyed reading the annual report on American Journalism because this is a career I hope to go into but I feel like before I even have a chance at it, there are many outlying factors that will prohibit me from being the best I can be. Citizen Journalism is fairly new to the media world but who is to blame or should there be blame placed at all? Information accessibility has converged with the media but it is not just how to access information but produced information from “unreliable” sources. Information credibility has shifted and whether that is good or bad, in my opinion, depends on the individual.
1. In response to my first question: Is citizen journalism the pillar of media convergence or a menace to the journalism world?- I think media convergence and interactivity correlate on a bigger level then citizen journalism but all in all citizen journalism has contributed to media convergence. According to wikipedia, Citizen Journalism “is the concept of members of the public “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information,” which I think is a great way to describe it. I also think it is funny that I turned to wikipedia for this answer because one would think that someone like me who is not fond of citizen journalism went to a website that is basically the mecca of it.
2. The section on Network TV and the Audience talked about the decline in nightly news network television, could the decline in the nightly news be a reflection of the recession?
I think that nightly news has a lot of controversy around it which causes a lot of people to disregard it all together. One would think that after a long day at work, staying up till 12:00 or 1:00am would be last on a priority list but if people are not working, could this be a reflection of a decrease in jobs so more people watch nightly news programs. These are hasty assumptions and from what I just wrote, that would possibly mean nightly news program interest would increase. I think that people choose to watch programs in the morning because with of the way television is today, the content is basically the same. Many years ago, a program past 10:00pm would probably contain brash content but with media convergence and content convergence, daytime television is about the same.
In my third question I talked about magazines and my questions was: Are magazines still a popular paper information outlet because of its distinct focus on a particular theme or interest for a specific audience? Or, will magazines eventually fall short to the digital media convergence era we live in today?
I think the thing that is suffering the most in the magazine industry are the advertisements. Magazines, in my opinion, are simplistic ways to get away from everyday media, which is normally depressing and sad. The authors of the forum stated “A magazine is not instantaneous. It does not cover the news as it is breaking. It is not a destination to find out what’s new.” This may be bad in the eyes of some but in mine, it is refreshing!