The Future of Journalism Workshop

“The Future of Journalism” session helped illustrate a point of view about the importance of knowing about technology as well as the dangers of using this median. One of the major themes that I heard reiterated over and over again was to take chances. Jim Brady repeatedly said that online journalism is a risk, but the very successful companies are all taking risks. A significant amount of trepidation comes from current controllers of journalism and even academic instructors being unfamiliar with new technology, according to Brady. The point has been made on many occasions that some forms of citizen journalism is not a respectable form of journalism. For example the point has been made that “bloggers are not journalists,” Brady’s response was that the statement was true but many journalists are bloggers so it was important to understand the difference between the two crafts.
Brady also made an important point about the use of technology, he said that it is not necessarily important to understand exactly how to do everything using new technology but it is important to know how these forms of technology work and how they may impact the future. One important point Brady made was concerning the dearth between online advertising in comparison to print. When analyzing this issue it is important to recognize that online advertising is growing, however it still does not compare to the revenue brought in by print advertising. Brady made the comparison of online journalism to the concept of the“ Field of Dreams” saying that unlike this notion if you build I they do not just come.
Online journalism as a new and evolving media is a risk however while it has not taken over newsrooms and newspaper offices it is involved in almost every legitimate/ competitive news outlet today.

My only personal concern with online journalism is the expectation of computer access. And while yes, 2007 is absolutely in the middle of an extremely technological age, there is a population of people in this country – namely the economic underclass and senior citizens – who do not generally use or have access to the internet. I believe the evolution of this online age further causes social stratification between the privileged and deprived.