As I watched All The President's Men (1976) the other week, I realized how efficient journalists have become with the aid of internet and computers in general. The scenes showing Bernstein and Woodward flipping through boxes and boxes of library slips to find a single piece of paper were eyeopening to the amount of work journalists in earlier decades had to do to support their articles. However, as many students have expressed in this blog, new technology has not only brought positive changes. Whether for or against the media's use of internet, social media, blogging, etc., it is necessary to know these communication tools when aspiring to become a journalist. Before I started this class, I had never blogged, tweeted or played around with wordle, but I now feel as if I have just taken one step further away from the journalistic world of Bernstein and Woodward. For better or for worse.
It has been very interesting to work hands-on with blogging. It has definitely given me some other experiences than just following a blog or being taught about blogging as a concept. Interacting with others online has been useful, and reading the blog posts and comments from other students has been both inspiring and interesting. This class has also confirmed the need for editors since it is so incredibly hard to edit your own work.
Being an internet-junkie, I think that living in a digital era is very exciting and challenging. As Terra points out in her blog post The Digital Era and Global Awareness, internet has made the world much smaller, and we are now connected very easily across continents and timezones. Internet and technology has also placed journalism in a state flux where experiments are ongoing, and we are struggling to redefine ourselves in a parallel digital universe. One of the greatest challenges is to sort out the useful tools from all the 'noise' online, and navigate around all the pitfalls created due to lack of understanding of new media. Another important issue is to maintain the traditional journalistic principles despite the furious pace of an online world, and stay connected to the real people behind the facebook profiles. I think the debate on this blog about journalism 2.0 and new media has been helpful to reach a more in-depth understanding of all these very confusing and diverse tools of modern journalism, and there has also been some very important ideas of what to avoid when using these tools. Hopefully, I will now be able to take away the best of both worlds and apply it to journalism.
Note: image from images.teamsugar.com
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