Maybe News Consumers Aren’t the Problem

News consumers may not be so pop culture obsessed after all according to the article “Public Tunes out Ellen DeGeneres Controversy.” The study found that while DeGeneres’s pet adoption melt down generated a fair amount of news coverage last week, overall the public expressed relatively little interest:

Only 5% paid very close attention and another 13% paid fairly close attention. Fully 59% said they were not following the story at all.

Most of the public is even saying that DeGeneres was over-covered by the media and even those who were paying fairly close attention to the story overwhelmingly said it was overdone.

The main story last week that caught the public’s attention was the news coverage about the danger of an antibiotic-resistant staph infection. The staph infection story was placed at the top of the weekly news interest index, but the overall coverage of the story was less then the actual public interest. More then a quarter of Americans aid very close attention to this story and 18% listed it as the single news story they followed the closest while only 3% of the national news was actually devoted to this story, making it only the 9th most heavily covered story of the week.

In other news last week, the public continued to pay close attention to the Iraq war, in spite of limited coverage, the presidential campaign, which was most heavily covered, and other issues like U.S. economy, the Pakistan bombing and Iraq policy.

I found it very interesting, and even a little refreshing, to see that is a world where Britney Spears gets more news coverage then the Iraq war that consumers may not be completely to blame. I think news outlets place too much emphasis on what they think consumers want to read about. This article just goes to show that sometimes it’s the news outlets fault, not the consumer, for space that should be devoted to hard news stories going to fluff stories dealing with pop cultural issues instead of world issues.

Video Killed the Newspaper Star

After reading the article “Will Newspapers Survive?” published by the Boston Globe I came to wonder the exact same thing.

After working in the newspaper world for 20 years Jeff Jacoby, writer for the Boston Gobe, noted that:

One of the first things I learned in this business was how eager some people are to express their disdain for it.

Today’s press critics aren’t saying anything that hasn’t already been said before because newspapers have always drawn fire, but they have also always drawn readers. Now, increasingly, they don’t. In years past everyone grew up in homes where newspapers were read everyday, but that is no longer the norm:

The percentage of Americans who read a paper every day has fallen from around 70 percent in 1972 to 35 percent today...newspaper circulation has been dropping for 20 years. What’s worse, the rate of decline seems to be speeding up.

So, who killed the newspaper? The conventional answer is that the Internet is the culprit. Readers by the millions have migrated to the Web, where news and information are supplied for free right at their fingertips. But is the rise of the Internet really the cause of the decline in newspapers? Jacoby says that when he started in the news industry 20 years ago readership was already on the slide and the absence of newspaper habits among young readers was already prompting concern. So if the Internet isn’t the cause, what is?

“I nominate not the computer screen, but the TV screen,” says Jacoby. It’s the rise of television and a generation raised on TV mindlessness that is creating a generation less equipped to read a newspaper.

I have to agree with Jacoby that it isn’t the Internets fault for the decline of newspapers, but the laziness created in the wake of television. Too many kids are raise on TV or “babysat” by TV, which creates a type of mindless zombie that goes throughout life not wanting to think for them self. It’s a lot let work at the end of the day to come home and tune into the TV, forgetting about everything else, then it is to pick up a newspaper and actually do more work in readers, digesting and understanding its content.

Google Saves the Day

How do I get there? I don’t know – Google it?

Whether it is across the county or across town Google Maps has become a staple in the lives of many travelers. According to the article “Newsrooms use Google Maps to improve wildfire coverage” now Google Maps is helping newsrooms improve the coverage of the California wildfires with interactive maps allowing journalists to chart the fires and their damage.

These fire maps have been used by the Los Angeles Times, the Union-Tribune’s SignOnSanDiego.com and KPBS-TV in San Diego to help their viewers get more information on where the fires have been and where they are heading.

Earlier this year Google introduced the “My Maps” function, which allows non-programmers to build and share customized Google Maps, allowing journalist to put up a map whenever relevant wildfire news occurs. A staff writer for the Los Angeles Times describes how their paper utilized Google Maps:

There were certain kinds of information that we started with. How many acres has this fire burned? How many firefighters are on the line? Are there injuries? Have there been homes destroyed or damaged? Where is the fire moving.

SignOnSanDiego’s Web team used its fire map to show shelters and burned homes, as well as fire origin points and burn areas.

SignOnSanDiego.com's fire map

Once available, the fire maps proved to be wildly popular with online readers:

An assistant chief with the Los Angeles Police Department said that ‘we had your map up at the emergency options center.’

Once Google noticed how much traffic the fire maps were getting they increases their server capacity to make sure the maps could be displayed quickly and reliably to the people depending on them.

The fire maps challenged news organizations to break from conventional news to deliver needed information to the public in the most timely and engaging ways technology would allow. The article noted that “This ability to deliver information, in this new way, unfiltered and up to the minute, was really important to people.”

Being a consumer of Google Maps myself it was very interesting to read how they have actually integrated themselves into a news source. It is a perfect example of Web 2.0 in that consumers want up to date information on things that pertain to them and they don’t want to simple read the news, but interact with it. The fire maps allowed readers to not only read about where the fires are but actual use a tool that allows them to get the current information that they desire whether it be simple where the fires are, where the fires are heading or where they themselves can go for shelter after being stuck by disaster.

Too Many Errors

In a question and answer style article “Talk to the Newsroom” published in The New York Times their deputy news editor, Philip Corbett, faces the question of why there seems to be so many more errors in The New York Times these days.

One such question was about the attention to grammar:

What’s with all the grammatical errors in The Times?...over the past couple years I’ve gotten the impression that many of your writers must not even have graduated from high school! Particularly striking is the number of errors relating to agreement between noun and verb.

Corbett responded by noting that the question seemed to have that everything-was-better-long-ago theme and that while many readers believe that there were fewer factual errors, typos, and grammatical lapses in The Times back in the old days he honestly doesn’t know if that is true. It’s that perception that worries him though. While he notes that it is possible that there are really more mistakes not than there were 20 or 30 years ago:

I truly don’t believe it’s because today’s writers or editors are less talented or conscientious than our predecessors. But I do think The Times today tries to do more than it did years ago. There is more late-breaking news, more variety of sections, topics and stories – and now...there’s the Web site, with constant updating of news and a whole new range of offerings...it may be that our effort to give readers more means that we fall short of perfection even more than we once did.

Another question dealt with copy editing in the Internet era:

Are there any copy editing errors or concerns that occur exclusively in the online version of The New York Times? Anything you didn’t have to think about back in the all-print-only-print days?

Corbett believes that the biggest challenges for copy editors posses by the Web site involve time and volume. Newspaper editors have always worked under tight deadlines but with the Web the deadlines is always here because of constant updates. The Web site also included a huge amount of material, far beyond what appears in the paper. Corbett noted that:

Our Web editors are always balancing the desire to be fast with the need to maintain our high standards of editing. Generally, I think we do a good job with the balancing act, though there are times when an error will slip through that makes us wish we had taken a few extra minutes.

While such errors happen in print too the difference is that it’s the final edition we have to live with the goof for 24 hours until it can be corrected. At least on the Web, errors can be fixed as soon as they’re spotted. One place for such errors are our blogs, which raise special issues for editors:

Like everything on nytimes.com, blogs are held to the same standards of accuracy and fairness that we apply to news articles. But the tone and writing style can be very different...Editors have to be able to allow a blogger’s voice and style to come through, while still maintaining Times standards.

I agree with Corbett in that while there may be more errors in the times it is definitely is not due to slacking editors. News organizations offer so much more to their readers then they did in the past, they have to. Readers demand up to date information and they want ways to interact and find their own news. It is because of this that newspapers are doing so many more things then ever imaginable in the past and I would much rather have many different news tools to pick from and interact with then one that is edited perfectly.

Nonprofit Investigative Journalism

The article “Group Plans To Provide Investigative Journalism” tells the story of Paul E. Steiger, who was the top editor of The Wall Street Journal for 16 years, and a pair of wealthy Californians who are assembling a group of investigative journalists willing to give away their work to media outlets.

The nonprofit group, Pro Publica, will pitch each project to a newspaper or magazine in hopes their work will make the strongest impression:

The plan is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeeds in government, business and organizations.

Nothing quite like this has ever been attempted before and Pro Publica will be something of an experiment by trial and error. Steiger is hopeful as he notes that “It is the deep-dive stuff and the aggressive follow-up that is most challenged in the budget process.”

Pro Publica plans to establish a newsroom in New York City and have 24 journalists along with a dozen other employees and will become a training ground for investigative reporters. Pro Publica is created in the wake of newspapers routinely publishing articles from wire services and subscriptions to major papers’ news services. However, except for fairly routine news wire services articles, the largest newspapers have generally been reluctant to use reporting from other organization. But experts say that “resistance is breaking down as business is squeezed financially, and newspapers make greater use of freelance journalists.”

While I know there are other services on a smaller scale like Pro Publica I have to wonder about the long-term outcome for them. Sure they will be very successful with aspects of news reporting that smaller news rooms don’t have the time or money to spend on, like in-depth and follow-up work, but I have to wonder how much of a living they can make off of that type of news alone. Most newspapers are centered around a local angle so it will be interesting to see the outcome of Pro Publica's success.

News For the New Generation

The article “ABC Reshapes the Evening News for the Web” tells about how executives at ABC have recognized that they have opportunities online that they don’t have on television, like the ability to test new forms of news delivery and new types of storytelling. One such online segment is a video account of ABC News correspondent Bill Blakemore’s recent trip to Greenland to see the effects of global warming. The video diary segment is the first of three documenting his trip and is aimed at the network’s afternoon Web cast.

ABC realizes that making their content relevant online is a good way to attract the younger audiences who are less likely to tune in to the evening news on television. However, ABC is the only major broadcast network that is using the staff of its evening newscast to produce a separate and distinct daily program for Web audience:

The 15-minute segments can run long, and they purposely look raw and personal, as if they were made for MTV rather than ABC.

The Web casts have evolved into an original program that incorporates video blogs, first-person essays and interviews that cover many of the same stories as its television sibling, just often in a different way. The ABC Web cast “resembles a younger, more technologically advance version of the traditional 6:40 p.m. report.” It is intended in part for people who view Web pages on iPods and cellphones – aimed directly at pleasing the coveted 25- to 54-year-olds.

ABC is definitely on to something. By realizing that the current news situation isn’t working for reaching a younger generation they are able to create a new one. In customizing the news to fit into the daily lives of younger audiences it creates a personalized aspect that speaks directly to the younger generations.

What Do We Need Copy Editors For Anyway?

According to the article “Just sack all the editors” published by the Baltimore Sun, copy editors have made a big mistake by coming to work in the evening after all the important people at the paper have gone for the day. They work late into the night creating remarkably clean newspapers and because they see no reason to “trumpet their achievements” their work often goes unnotices.

This was brought to attention when Joseph Lodovic, the president of Dean Singleton’s MediaNews, voiced the following statement:

We have to find ways to grow revenue or become more efficient by eliminating fixed costs. Why does every newspaper need copy editors? In this day and age, I think copy-editing can be done centrally for several newspapers.

The article cleverly paralleled Lodovic’s comment on copy editors to that of meat inspectors by saying that they are costly, don’t generate revenue and by reducing their number you can save a few bucks:

Sure, a little E. coli will get into the hamburger, and you may have to recall a few million pounds of meat, and a few soreheads may file multimillion-dollar lawsuits – but really, all you were doing was eliminating some fixed costs...Doesn’t the public understand that maintaining a satisfactory profit margin depend on reducing costs?

Most newspapers are made up of intensive local coverage so they need local copy editors, not centralized editors located miles away. The article asks the question of how copy editors working five states away are going to recognize when a “photo desk has supplied for the James F. Smith obituary a photo of James T. Smith” or that an article “has located Savage in Anne Arundel County rather than Howard.”

Many times it isn’t just errors in grammar and usage that the copy desk catches, but also local details that can enhance or diminish the credibility of the report. Just as noted in the article “Hats Off To The Unsung Copy Editor,” readers have no tolerance for carelessness. The work of a copy editors is just as important to readers as is the work of reporters because what it really comes down to is credibility and no matter what the article is written about if there are errors there are losses of readers.

Judgment Call

“5 Weeks After He Disappeared, Still No Obituaries for Fossett.” The article published by The New York Times explores the nightmare of most editors who handle obituaries; writing about someone who is, in fact, alive.

The disappearance of well-known adventurer Steve Fossett, while flying across the Nevada desert over five weeks ago, has created an unusual predicament:

When a person vanishes without a trace, when, if ever, should a news organization publish an obituary?

Adam Bernatein, writer for The Washington Post, began preparing an obituary almost immediately, but it has not yet been published because he hasn’t been officially declared dead. The Post is not alone, other major newspapers took similar steps and have also held back because of danger in presumption:

We don’t want to put anyone in the grave, so to speak.

But when do you decided? For Time magazine, the time came on Oct. 3, when the government halted the search for Mr. Fossett. However, the end of the search did not prompt other news organizations to move forward.

Situations like this are rare but hard to navigate. Newspapers were hesitant to presume John F. Kennedy Jr. dead after his plane crashed in 1999, but most major publications ran obituaries within four days.

Even after reading the article I have no idea how I would respond to running an obituary in such a situation. There will ever be a clear answer so I guess it’s just a judgment call. My first thought was to wait because once it’s out there you can’t take it back. There is no, “Oops my bad,” in journalism. But at the same time you don’t want to find yourself being scooped by your competitors for the sake of the family. I personally don’t think that you should ever publish an actual obituary on someone if there is never a confirmed death. While the concept needs to be addressed I don’t think it needs to be done in the form of an obituary.

Getting "The Gist"

According to “Getting It Wrong, Letting It Slide” published in the Miami Herald, the mightier the news organization, the likelier it will stand by ethical blunders that would otherwise shame a first-year reporter. One such example involves The New York Times Sunday Magazine when allegations of “gross distortions in what appear to be verbatim interviews.”

The Times magazine runs a regular Q&A feature which interviews reported that the questions they’re apparently answering in print weren’t the ones they were asked. Instead, things they said were sliced, reshuffled and published out of sequence and out of context.

One of the disgruntled interviewees was NBC News heavyweight Tim Russert who complained that the published version of his Mother’s Day interview was:

Misleading, callous and hurtful, and inaccurately had him extolling his father at the expense of his mother, who had recently died.

The Times responded by saying that:

The editor of the column assure themselves that the Q-and-A reflects accurately the gist of the whole conversation and contains actual quotes, both questions and answers.

Contains actual quotes sure, but what about the question inserted that were never asked? Not to mention representing the speaker as saying things they did not mean on the basis of getting “the gist” of it.

And you wonder why the public doesn’t trust you?

Are you kidding me? That was all I could think after reading such an article. How can newspapers get away with this? There is no excuse for letting a newspaper, I don’t care how big they are; get away with such a blatant lie in my eyes. It is bad enough that they are splicing quotes, taking things out of context and rearranging answers, but when you report someone as answering a question that you didn’t even ask you are stepping into a whole new territory of unethical behavior. I agree with the article in asking why you think the public doesn’t trust news sources anymore. It saddens me to reach such an article and only makes me want to read the news even less.

CBS + Gossip = ????

Gossip Web sites and blogs have become must-have acquisitions for mainstream media companies. AOL is the proud owner of TMZ.com and Yahoo! acquired celebrity news site OMG.com Now according to the article “Gossip Websites – Talk Is Cheap, But Celebrity Gossip Can Be Priceless” published in The Independent, some have accused CBS of jumping on the bandwagon.

CBS, one of America’s biggest radio and television networks paid a reported $10 million last week for little-known celebrity gossip blog DotSpotter.com, which bills itself as “The Pulse of Pop Culture” and offers readers a mix of gossip, news, pictures and videos.

Why the purchase of a gossip site that has only 350,000 visitors a month? Alex Burmaster, Internet Analyst for Nielsen/NetRatings offers an idea:

I suppose CBS are banking on DotSpotter becoming much bigger and are getting in now before prices get ridiculous, something that often happens when the ‘next big thing’ is touted around online.

One must be careful because gossip sites publish material that is much more risqué then traditional printed news and the bigger the site the more likely it is to come under legal scrutiny. Take Perez Hilton’s recent legal issues with Britney Spears’ record company.

With such big risk involved one might ask why traditional news medias are taking it. Simple. Gossip sites attract the illusive demographic, which is gold to advertisers, the 25 to 34 year-olds. While it is a smart move from an economic stand point it has to make you stop and wonder. Why are hard news medias associating themselves with celebrity gossip sites that have virtually no credibility. Sure it allows you to reach a younger generation in advertising dollars but that’s about it. The news organizations are reaching them on a news level and, if anything, they are discrediting themselves by putting their name on such Web sites.

Secrecy of Jail - That is the Question!

According to the article “Protecting a Free Press” published by the Savannah Morning News, “Confidential sources can be the lifeblood of news articles.” Historic journalism like the abuse at Abu Ghraib may not have been written if reporters had to reveal where they obtained their information.

The promise a journalist makes of secrecy to a source could sometimes mean choosing between keeping their word or going to jail. According to the article such a decision “inhibits the free flow of information that citizens need to make sound decisions in a free society.”

It is because of such instances that many individual states have shield laws which provide varying degrees of protection. This freedom of the press varies from state to state even though it should be addressed at the national level.

According to the article:

Some sources who talk to reporters about wrongdoing in the public or private sectors fear retribution. A federal shield laws keeps the lines of communication open, keeps the public informed and keeps reporters from getting locked up for doing their jobs.

Shield laws are an incredible important and powerful tool that journalist need to posses if they are to be able to write on issues that are high profile. Many sources wouldn’t feel safe releasing information they know due to the fact that it could resulted in them loose their jobs or even worse being physically harmed. Just as the identity of jury members is often withheld for safety reasons, journalist should be able to withhold the identity of a source for safety reasons.

This creates a fine line that journalist have to walk in that by not releasing the source of their information they face the risk of not being believed. It could also create skepticism among readers of whether a reporter is even reporting the truth or just making up stories and attributing them to unnamed sources.

What's In a Journalist?

“Senate Bill Aims to Define Who Is a Journalist” was a headline from the Washington Post that immediately caught my eye. Dealing with the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007, one of the biggest issues is just who is a journalist, or as the bill phrases, a “covered person.”

According to the bill a journalist or covered person is someone who:

...engages in journalism...that would cover those working for major news organizations as well as individuals putting out their own blogs or newsletters.

The Senate bill also included a list of who is not a covered person:

...an agent of a foreign power...anyone who is reasonably expected to possess, control, transmit or receive foreign intelligence information while such person is in the United States...anyone who, because of past actions, is excluded from participating in federal grants, aid or procurement or non-procurement activates.

This article was surprising to me in that the Senate bill actually accepts individuals that put out their own blogs. I would have thought that from a journalistic standpoint, bloggers would be looked at as being below news worthy and not included in forms of protection given by the laws for journalist. In today’s society where everyone seems to be blogging it is both a asset in that it is keeping up with the times but also a possible detriment in that anyone can publish a blog about anything, true or false.

Britney Domination

Imagine the surprise of author Jake Halpern when he was invited by CNN to discuss his book on America’s deleterious obsession with celebrities, “Fame Junkies,” only to be told he had been bumped:

It was certainly a delightful irony when, upon my arrival, I was told that my segment had been canceled due to breaking news...Britney Spears just lost custody of her kids.

The article “Bumped for Britney” published by the Colombia Journalism Review noted that according to Halpern, in 2004, network news gave five times more coverage to Martha Stewart than Darfur. While networks may get ratings spikes by flooding the Britney zone one has to think, “Enough already.”

Producers and reporters must inform and educate on issues of public relevance, especially since the public’s interest tend to follow news coverage. It’s time to remember as viewers we are not only consumers, but citizens as well.

The celebritization of news media is due partly to the need to drive viewers to consume advertisers’ products and services in an attempt to increase the value of their own advertising space. News media has become too involved in the advertising game and too worried about their bottom dollar. News and stopped being news and journalist have shifted into this celebriality where Britney is suddenly more important than the war in Iraq.

Baiting Your Audience

According to the article “Newspapers: Hook ‘Em Online” Luring new readers means connecting with them on the Internet through blogs, live online chats and interactive databases.

Jim Brady, vice president and executive editor of washingtonpost.com, said that due to a steady decline in newspaper advertising and circulation, building communities of readers online is essential:

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We’re in a battle every day for traffic. People are very, very sporadic on how they use the Web and the sites they go to.

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Another key way to attracting readers is by creating online databases. A person can go online to explore a database that allows them to search public records by typing in an address and receiving information on what a neighbor paid for their home.

Attempting to attract readers by targeting them online is a genius movement in the news world because so many of their readers are online consumers. They frequent blogs, live in online chat rooms and use interactive databases to search for all of their informational needs. Reaching out to an audience by starting on their level is a great way to gain attention, understanding and appreciation because it is from a level playing field that they know and are already fluent in.

Whose Kos? Moulitsas's Kos!

Reporters ought to be more thourough when sourcing information to Web Sites was the introduction into the article “Who speaks for a website?” published by the Online Journalism Review. Markos Moulitsas, from the DailyKos, raised an important issue to which all journalist who cover the Web ought to show greater sensitivity to. Moulitsas complained about the Wall Street Journal article which claimed that Moulitsas’ Web site held a position on campaign finance reform that is actually the opposite of Moulitsas’ position.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time it has happened. This summer, Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly attacked DailyKos over selected comments and diaries that appeared on the site, claiming that the site supported those views. While neglecting to note that those posts were from readers who have no financial or editorial relationship with the site.

With thousands of readers posting diaries on the DailyKos each week it is possible to attribute just about any political position to someone on the website. But that’s the key: the attribution ought to be given to the person on the Web site, and not the Web site itself.

It is because of this issue that the old newspaper/TV model doesn’t apply to Web communities. If a reporter appears in the news pages of the Wall Street Journal, reporter at other papers can attribute that report to “The Wall Street Journal” without providing the byline of the actual reporter who wrote the piece. This is because that reporter was assigned that piece by the paper which pays them and edits them.

This is not the case with copy being published on DailyKos and the thousand of other Web communities. Reader sign up for an account and after a one week wait can start posting diaries to the website. While a site’s editors might read it in consideration for linking to it from the site’s heavily-read front page, there is no other staff editorial review of the diary. The topics aren’t assigned by DailyKos and, aside from a handful, aren’t paid for either. Unless a diary contains copyrighted material or violates the site’s rules for posting, it will remain on the site, even if it conflicts with the owner’s political beliefs.

Attributions of reporters that appear on sites like DailyKos to the site itself is like attributing a CNN report as cable television’s views. To be fully accurate news reports should cite the individual author of information found on the site, rather than just the site itself.

Due to this issue Moulitsas has declared “No one speaks for Daily Kos other than me. Period."

Journalist ought to respect this and sharpen their procedures for attributing information from online communities that allow publication from readers, as well as paid staff. Readers have a right to know the source of the information in your stories, which demands that you not overlook, or withhold, relevant context about the identity of a source.

From Hard Print to Screen Print

According to the article “An Evolution from Journalism to Blogalism” in the Free Press journalism as we know it today isn’t always what journalism was especially if you look back to the beginning. It has come a long way with print and broadcast, but media is changing again, and in a big way. The earliest forms of journalists in America had no pretense of objectivity as the goal was, and still is, to sell stories the public wanted to read. Whether it was rumors of witchcraft or accusations of questionable lineage, early journalism was often little more than gossip.

The Associated Press was formed to reign in the madness of such journalists and eventually it subsided and news became not only routine, but virtually unchallenged.

Howard Owens, ex-newspaper publisher, describes how the business of news settled itself into that certain way of doing:

We developed inverted pyramids both to fit wire service needs and because the nature of the print package sometimes required stories to jump, so we wanted to get news up top. We developed certain professional standards related to the content of the story because with mass production, we essentially had only one chance to get the story right. We had to put premium on accuracy and fair mindedness.

Owens goes on to note that times have changed, and are changing rapidly, at once progressive and regressive. Competition between news providers is steeper than it has ever been with a multitude of avenues for deliver from radio and broadcast to cable.

Then you have the bloggers, disorganized, unschooled, undisciplined, and free of editors, publishers or conglomerates. They are under the direction of their own conscience and the immediate response of their readers, who will and do respond immediately, adding their own information and commentary to the mix.

It’s an information free-for-all the world has never seen and you have the Great Media Divide. There are journalist and Old Media, with their pesky responsibilities, self-imposed regulations, advertiser sensitivities, and publisher/owner biases. All of which the public is rather sick of. Then there are the bloggers, with nothing but what freedom of the press was intended for in the first place, “blowing the whistle on abuses of power.”

So how does journalism survive itself in the age of New Media? The way it has in ages past, the way everything survives: it adapts. One must think, behave and report like a blogger while, somehow, keeping with standards and practices, professional pedigree, and certifications. Adopt, understand and use new technology before you engage the audience where the audience is. The world is changing again, and as a journalist you must change with it.

I think it is very important to change and adapt with new situations in whatever form of career path you choose. It is incredible important within the journalism field because in today’s world if you don’t go with the flow you will get left behind and ultimately forgotten. New styles of media have created a demand for a certain type of journalism. You can no longer ignore these changes and expect to continue on as if nothings changed. You either sink or swim, and when the water level is rising and the currents are changing you had better be one heck of a good swimmer.