What this class has taught me

One thing I have studied and learned throughout the semester in the JMC 461 - Web Strategies course is the importance of social media in the journalism world today.  Social media allows news organizations and outlets to immediately get breaking news out to viewers.  I’ve also learned this could be a double-edged sword. While viewers are able to immediately learn about breaking news, news organizations also are in such a rush to report that sometimes false information is published and corrections have to be issued.  Also, the Internet has helped the media grow and reach more listeners/viewers/media consumers.  All of this knowledge relates to my hopeful profession of broadcast journalism because I would be able to use these forms of social media to push more traffic to my stories and links to the website for the news organization I’m working for.  A lot of this information was learned throughout the semester in class and was added to by the book I read for the book report, Blur.  Blur showed how journalism has changed with the advancements of technology and the creation of the 24-hour news cycle. Also, I was interested in how the book showed how stories were reported on back in the day versus how they would have been reported on now with the new technology. The book gave me a lot of information that will be beneficial to my career in the journalism field.

Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload

For web strategies I recently read Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. I never expected to enjoy reading it however I was very pleasantly surprised to not only enjoy reading the book but also get a lot of valuable information out of it on the journalism field and be able to apply it to my life and future career.

The book discusses the age of the 24-hour news cycle and how it has changed the way media consumers receive and view their information while also changing the way news stories are reported on by journalists and news organizations. Consumers used to get their new information fix at set times either at designated newscast times or each morning with the newest copy of the daily paper. However, with the 24-hour news cycle, newscasts are always on and with the advancement of technology, a consumer can go to the internet and find just about any information they want on a given topic or story.

The 24-hour news cycle has created a rush to report mentality. News organizations want to be the first to break the story whether they have all of the facts or not, a complete 180 degree turn from how things used to be in the past. Reporting actual verified facts should be the most important thing to a news organization however, the push for ratings and more viewers has led stations astray. If a station is the first to break a story, they think they’ll retain the viewers and this should not be the way of thinking.

Also, with the 24-hour news cycle, stations have a tendency to “beat a dead horse,” meaning it’s the same stories with very little to no new facts added. As the example in chapter one shows, if the Three Mile Island nuclear incident would have taken place today, it would be non-stop news coverage for a month or more basically sharing the same information over and over with very little to no change.

This book as taught me a lot for my future career. One thing I want to be known for is reporting the verified facts of a story. I may not be the person to break the story but my story could be the first accurate story and in my opinion that is far more important. The books examples also lead me to research the events mentioned. I feel that as a journalist you should always want to continue expanding your knowledge and learning more and this book definitely increased my desire to learn more about how changes have affected the field of journalism.