In my opinion, Journalism is the art of reporting stories to a large audience by some means of communications. Before our discussion in class i thought it was as simple as delivering information to an audience. Some times it is that simple, like Citizen Journalism, but most times it is more complicated (like Professional Journalism).

Journalism started with word of mouth and after a long time turned into newspapers, radio, and television news broadcasts. But this changed quick. Soon the internet came along and changed Journalism forever. The goal of Journalism is simply to get the news out to people, to tell people what is going on in the crazy world they live in. But, this too, changed throughout the years. Now there are several T.V. programs and websites that will tell you what happened and also try to influence you to believe something. There are some programs and sites that are neutral but most are biased in some way, such as:

Fox News- Democrats are evil.

New York Times- Republicans are idiots.

That is what Journalism is like today, but what will it look like in a couple decades?

According to James Turner (an editor for O’ Reilly Media), in a video regarding the future of Journalism, since about 2002 the amount of adults reading the newspaper has steadidly declined at a rate of about two percent per year. This can be mostly contributed to the fact that the internet has been taking over for a while.

Tony Rogers (an About.com Guide to Journalism) says in his blog that he believes that if and when newspapers die that all news will die with it. He says that most bloggers get their news/ideas from newspapers. He also says that news programs only talk about the immediate news such as a fire or a car accident. Newspapers write about the things that television anchors don’t say like how your local schools are doing.

While Tony Rogers makes some valid points I do not agree that the end of newspapers will mean the end of news itself, and neither does Brian Storm (founder of Mediastorm).

In an interview with Brian Storm at the Creative Business Convention in Germany, he says that the new tools available have made news better by means of distribution.

Tony Rogers said that the newspaper is what gives the information to the bloggers, and that when the newspaper dies so will the news. I disagree with this because the newspapers get their information from witnesses. This means that the newspaper is really just an unnecessary piece in this puzzle. However, the newspaper is not completely unnecessary. I still prefer to get the news from credible sources like T.V.

Another issue that James Turner talks about in his presentation is that Citizen Journalism is becoming more common. This is good for breaking news stories he says but bad for stories that require a bit more investigation.

For example, Citizen Journalism is good if someone posted on Facebook or Twitter that the World Trade Center was being attacked. However, it is not as great if someone post a story that the mayor in their city is corrupt. There needs to be investigation that most Citizen Journalists don’t have the time for.

The future of Journalism will certainly be different than the way it is now. Newspapers may die out but will Journalsim die? No. Some of the credibility that came with the newspapers might die but Journalism will likely be around for quite a while.

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