While riding New York City’s subway system on a daily basis, it’s common to see passengers enjoying the daily paper at all times of the day. This has been a long time tradition for many years and it is still in effect. However with todays technologically advancing society, there is fear that the future for journalism may be dying. The online movement has become the new fad which is already bumping the newspaper industry into the dumps. I believe that the future for journalism will be technologically inspired but there will always remain the tradition of a printed piece.
There are many different outlets in which people get their news which iclude broadcast, internet, radio, the crawl, and finally print. With such a wide variety to choose from, it is only natural that the source which is more favorable would rise above all of the others. As of today the internet is where most people retrieve their news because it is literally right at your fingertips and also free. When people hear the word free, there is almost no competition left. Why should you pay for print when you can read the news for free at your own convience? This is why many would question the future of journalism. Another factor which makes online news more effective is because it is interactive, this changes and broadens the demograhics of who is reading the news. Originally, the news was seen as something that the elderly was affiliated with but now that online news has incorporated more multimedia the younger generations are becoming viewers. Multimedia include images, slideshows,videos, podcasts blogs, twitter and facebook. I feel that we are at the point of no return, meaning that since the online movement has been introduced we can not go back to just reading print instead we can expand upon the movement to make readers continue to enjoy reading the news online but also have the printed version co-exist.
In the Columbia Journalism Review, the article “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” by Leonard Downie Jr. and Micheal Schudson in November/December 2009 goes on to say “at the same time, digital technology–joined by innovation and entrepreneurial energy–is opening new possibilities for reporting. Journalists can research much more widely, update their work repeatedly, follow it up more thoroughly, verify it more easily, compare it with competitors, and have it enriched and fact-checked by readers.” This suggests the versatility of the online movement and I agree with this because there are many challenges facing the printed news organization including proliferation, splintering, fragments of news sources, integrity, credability, interactive, and quality. I feel that the future of journalism will rely on the internet in order to make the news publicly known.
The avenues for finding news related material has become so widespread, you can even type into youtube a specific event and find the broadcasted video link. Newspapers have homepages which have the exact same stories covered in the printed edition. Bloggers even write up their own pieces which the public has also taken interest in reading. There will always be those who say “if its on paper its legit” which is why I feel that in the future, it will remain as is where the paper and the internet will both be the sources of journalism. The only modification which i think would benefit the printed paper would be to focus more on local news and international news.