The Future of News

The journalism world is changing and so is the printed story. More and more people are getting their news on-line. I particularly liked the piece about Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is repeatably slammed as not being a reliable news source because it's content can be changed by the user. The source of the news is unknown. Now, many of the postings on this site are cited and linked to other sources. If you do the research and follow the links, it should help prove the accuracy of the postings. This does not necessarily make every posting accurate, but as it was pointed out by one of the commenters, Wikipedia is becoming more accurate and reliable every day.

I also like the idea of making the news entertaining. One could argue that "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central has much of the same popularity as many of the news programs on many of the other news channels that would be considered to have more "journalistic integrity." I think it's people's natural desire to be entertained as well as being informed. These links, much like the numerous videos on youtube, are the ones that are forwarded to all your friends that you think that would enjoy the content. This increases the visibility of the subject, the writer, and the web-site.

Another thing that I have seen, on many sports web-sites, is the on-going blog. They usually assign a writer to cover an event such as the winter meetings of Major League Baseball or the final table at the World Series of Poker. These are events that can last several hours if not several days. The blogger will post an update every hour or so to update you on the latest news or rumor. Their ongoing commentary keeps you up to date on what's going on at the event without being there.

I don't know how these changes in the way news is covered will affect my future in journalism. But the way news is covered is definitely changing with the advancement of the Internet and our demand for news coverage coverage. Until we find a new medium that is quicker and faster than the computer, like maybe the cell phone, this will be the way to get the news now. The way cell phones are going though, they could be next way to get the news.