Social media is not going anywhere, despite how unwilling some aspiring journalists are to accept it as a essential part of journalism. Twitter, Facebook and blogs are easier ways for people to have access to the news and so journalists need to learn to embrace those mediums even if they don't know how to (or don't want to, like Jayme said) use them. Journalism is heading in a direction where if journalists aren't constantly tweeting or blogging, then the fast-pace of the digital era will leave those journalists in the dust. Credible journalists (those who went to school) will have to compete with citizen journalists (those who did not) because a popular trend is that traditional journalism is dying.
Other Tools
On the bright side, journalists have access to a plethora of multi-media tools that are here to make their jobs easier. Wordles take words a person inserts and scrambles them up to make"beautiful world clouds." These are important from an image standpoint. Having wordles make the blog post, or online article look more attractive and this is important in the online world of journalism. Another important tool that journalists (and people) can use to enhance the quality of their blogs or online news articles is Toondoo. These are a simple yet effective way of applying humour to the blog or news article. Journalists should definitely embrace these tools in order to put them a step ahead of other journalists (citizen or actual) who aren't aware of them.
Multi-media
Video, images and audio clips are useful in the online world. People tend to read 25% slower on the web than they do with print. These other multi-media tools are helpful so that people can have video or sound impact rather than just print. This helps keep the reader interested and engaged in the article or blog post. A wise teacher once said, "show me, don't tell me." (Shelly Decker)
There are so many different facets of journalism in this day. The digital era is taking journalism in a different direction leaving the journalists who choose not to embrace it in the dust.
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