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Journalism vs. Time

Reading the newspaper used to be a huge part of everyone's life as a whole as it told them

how and what is happening in their world and community. The main purpose of journalism was

to guide citizens with information on how to make the best possible decision for their decision,

community, and lives. I used to never pay attention really to journalism because I always thought

it was a one-dimensional thing but, as I did my research, and paid more attention. I noticed that it

wasn’t one dimensional at all. As time passed and I grew older I started to get into writing and

was even apart of the yearbook class at school. In doing that the reason behind journalism and

why it is so important to our world. I realized that not only does journalism provide information

for the reader and the community but, it also gives you a story to visualize. After reading the

book, Humans of New York, written by Brandon Stanton and it opened my eyes to the evolving

world of journalism and what it can tell you about the world and community around you. I

eventually found that not only is the world of journalism, not one dimensional but it is also

adaptive to the world around it. As a growing photographer I connected that like photography,

journalism tells you a story about people or things you didn’t even know about. Along with

photography along with journalism is going through changes during this current era. So I have

left this one question: How and why is journalism changing during this current era?

In this current era, social media influences everything we do or look at. Since social

media is worldwide and widely used by every single person around you. It is hard for a single

thing to not be changed or affected by it. For journalism, it is faced with the phrase “fake news”.

According to Alicia Briggs, a writer at Santa Barbara Independent, she wrote about Christina
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Bellantoni discussion on the Importance of Ethical Reporting where Bellantoni stated that along

with the financial struggles newsrooms are facing they also have to try to compete/adapt to the

age of the Internet. She then goes on to explain that newsrooms will also be facing the pressure

added by President Trump’s attacks on the media (Briggs). Briggs talks about the struggles of

how journalism is being affected by the media and politicians today. It makes sense to believe

that this is true because of how much this generation of people is stuck using media to tell them

what is happening around them. According to a study done by a group at Stanford, the internet

has changed the methods, purpose and people’s perception of journalism and news (How Has

Journalism Changed?). To continue the argument that journalism is being greatly affected by the

internet/social media the article also explains that there are two major changes that are affecting

modern journalism which are the rise of bloggers and user-based journalism and that the internet

has given rise to the content aggregators. Some of the examples that it provides being Google

News and The Huffington Post (How Has Journalism Changed). To help strengthen my point

that social media has an effect on journalism I interviewed Amber Lineweaver and asked what

changes do you think are happening to journalism?

Northgate yearbook and past journalism teacher Amber Lineweaver has spent that last

couple of years teaching English and yearbook at Northgate High School. She has taught

journalism for five years at past schools she has taught at.

“‘I think what I saw was a decrease in investigative journalism,’ she explains, ‘ In the 90s

and 2000s it kind of died out. Quite frankly because there wasn’t as much of a need for it.’” She

then goes on to comment, “Today in politics I think investigative journalism is on the rise again

and its huge and you know you got the president of the United States trying to control free

speech and the media. So as a result media is pushing back. I think that journalism is once again
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becoming empowered and stronger and the need for investigative journalism is at its peak. The

newspapers and journalists are the ones who keep the politicians and government in check.”

Mrs. Lineweaver feels very passionate about the effect that journalism has and what it

does for the world. Along with that, she believes that journalism is needed in this world to again

keep the people who run our country in check. She has mentioned that when it comes to

President Trump she’s very bias.

Due to social media, the meaning of journalism is not only changing but, it is also being

amended. Social media along with technology are affecting everything we do in our world. In

journalism’s case, it is being affected in different ways. A journalist, Tom Regan explains, “In

the past, my newspaper work meant finding a good story, doing interviews and research, and

filing my stories or columns on time.” He then goes on to say, “Those elements remain at the

core, but new elements have been added” (Regan). He starts to talk about how he wants to make

videos and audio with text instead and how he wants to put his email on everything that he

writes. He goes to explain that with social media he wants readers to receive his work as fast as

possible. It makes sense that he would say this because with technology and social media

everything is at the touch of a button or one swipe away from you seeing what the media wants

you to see, read, or hear. In an article about how the industry of journalism is changing, author,

Eileen Solomon talks about how not only are the methods are changing for the industry but the

way people are getting the information, and the way incoming journalists are learning how to do

things. She begins by saying that the way they used to teach new journalists has turned more

towards the way social media has impacted journalism. Talking about how there are courses that

emphasize multimedia and journalism and how there are colleges that are starting to have

courses that emphasize the same thing. In discovering this she brings up the fact that it isn’t
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necessarily a negative that this much change is coming to the industry of journalism, it is more of

time for journalism to adapt to its surroundings and come up with ways to get better at what it

has been doing for the past years. To reiterate this change isn’t bad or good for the world of

journalism. It’s rather one over the other.

The community of journalism may be changing and this change can either be good or

bad. Currently, journalists are debating whether these changes are positive or negative for the

journalism community. During this current era with Donald Trump, journalists or analyzers are

saying that this is an indication of the end of the “audience-last/reporter-as-gatekeeper model of

journalism” and with that, they’re saying that journalism is taking on more of an “audience-

involved” style of journalism (Cilliza). With that said it shows how people are noticing how not

only journalism but how things around them might be changing. With an “audience-involved”

style it shows how in this current era everyone is starting to adapt to being more open and having

free speech instead of seeing what other people want you to see. The only problem with

everyone being heard is that there will be more of a bias and argument based journalism present

rather than the truth. Chris Cilliza stated, “journalists are transitioning from being responsible for

every part of [the] story cycle to being responsible for some parts of [the] story cycle” (Cilliza).

Cilliza brings up an interesting point on how journalists are changing into something different.

Talking about how they used to always get what they needed to find a story on their own without

much help from sources other than the ones they found but, now in the present journalists are

starting to look at and write stories about what the readers want to see, what the media wants to

see, and what other writers are also writing about. Journalists today seem to only look at what

everyone talks or writes about on social media and not other stories that people might be

interested in reading about. Journalists like Benjamin Toff is saying that one aspect of journalism
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that is being affected is political journalism. He goes on to comment, “political journalism has

become infatuated with opinion polls, what some have called a “Nate Silver Effect” and yet news

organizations remain ill-equipped to make sense of the flood of data” (Toff). Toff begins to

explain that because of these opinion polls and because of the rise in social media the news

organization has become more corrupt than ever before. Bringing up the point that anyone can

make their own poll and get passed as social science and ruin the overall audience because of the

information on the poll provided being fake news or invalid overall. With that said the change

going through journalism can be either good or bad in the end. With that said I interviewed

Jordan Fong, I decided to ask him, how he thinks social media is affecting journalism?

Jordan Fong currently works in San Francisco, California in marketing and is a

photographer on the side. He’s still currently working in San Francisco and continues to take

pictures on the side. He loves taking pictures because of what stories they can tell the audience

who sees them.

“When it comes to talking about how social media and its effect on journalism all you

can really think about is how everyone would be able to say something and then a group of

people will end up believing it at some point.” He then goes on to say, “Journalism was an

authentic thing and in the end, it had to adapt to the times, it was inevitable. The only thing about

the change is that it’s not producing the right result or the result that people wanted at least. The

result ended up being that anyone and everyone can be the journalist and with that said it’s hard

to tell what is good and what’s bad journalism. Meaning that you don’t know what is right or

wrong bias or non-bias. It’s hard to know what is authentic and good quality journalism that you

can actually trust. I say that because you don’t know where these people get their information

from anywhere like non-valid websites or just hear opinions from people around them.”
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Jordan Fong still feels pretty strong about how journalism is right now in this current era

of evolving social media and wants to continue to learn more about the different changes

journalism is going to go through in the future. He is still working in San Francisco and still

continues to do photography on his off time

In journalism, some of the aspects of it are ever changing. Today in this current era of

journalism and the information that is providing by the news organizations is not what it should

be. According to book, The News: A User’s Manual, written by Alain de Botton, he states that

“there is a prejudice at large within many news organizations that the most prestigious aspect of

journalism is the dispassionate and neutral presentation of ‘facts’”. Which he then goes on to list

a few news organizations that have problems with providing facts, for instance, CNN, NRC

Handelsblad of the Netherlands, and the BBC. He brings up the point that there isn’t anything

wrong with having too many facts, it’s the idea that the news organizations do not know what to

do with the ones that they have. From my understanding with saying that news organizations

don’t know what to do with the facts that they have he is trying to know what they are trying to

answer, what question do the facts they provide, what does this actually mean, and how does this

relate to the initial question that they asked in the first place. Which then leads Button into

talking about how bias is not so bad after all. Generally, bias has a horrible reputation in the

serious journalistic industry. Stating that it’s synonymous with malevolent quarters, saying that it

contains lies and authoritarian attempts to deny audiences the freedom to make up their own

minds (Button). It makes sense since with bias it pointing towards one side of the argument or

question that is asked rather than going towards the middle. He starts to explain, “In its pure

form, a bias simply indicates a method of evaluating events that are guided by a coherent

underlying thesis about human functioning and flourishing” (Button). As he puts it, “It is a pair
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to bring it more clearly into focus”. Bias with the right use can help explain what events mean

and introduce a scale that can help judge ideas and find ways to bring light to better examples.

But do to fighting sides of journalism and social media the meaning of bias has been tainted and

changed into something that was never supposed to be. The need for quality journalism has

always been needed for example Robert W. McChesney author of the book Will the Last

Reporter Please Turn Out The Lights: The collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix

It, I read that there was a study conducted by the University of Southern California on Los

Angeles television news that stated that fifteen minutes of the half-hour newscast was spent of

crime stories, features, sports, and weather. Also, that half of the time was spent on ads and

teaser and then only twenty-two seconds were spent on governmental issues that really show

what news is supposed to be about. I found this interesting because this really shows how not

only social media is affecting journalism but, also shows what the audience really wants to see

on the news. There is a huge disconnect between the news organizations and the audience:

leading to how the age of journalism is changing significantly. The audience wants to be

entertained and to most of them hearing things about the government struggles to fulfill that area

of excitement in their minds.

Ultimately, as much as some people want the effect of technology and social media to not

change journalism so that it can keep its authenticity, it can not be helped. Technology and social

media will always find a way to change what we know into something we have to figure out in

the end and do to the current era where social media and technology is everywhere and in

everything, it would be very hard for something like journalism to avoid. The positive and

negative impacts of this will never find its limits. Journalism will always be needed and so will

social media and everything that comes with it. The world of journalism is going to find a way to
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adapt to the changes it faces in the future and that is for certain. Look at journalism now it isn’t

dead, it’s getting to its peak and who knows when it will ever drop again. The industry is

changing but at the same time, it is keeping its core methods intact. Which are gathering

information, submitting the article that the writer thought of, and then providing information to

the people of the world. One of the changes in journalism that will forever be constant is its

definition and its meaning. Fake news will always be the plague that ravishes the community of

journalism due to the era we live in right now. But who says that is going to stop journalism from

doing what it needs to do. All the findings show how there are different factors that affect

journalism and its many factors. The main thing to take from this is that the times of social media

and audience-driven journalism is here and it might be here to stay for a while.

Works Cited

“How Has Journalism Changed?” Don Knuth's Home Page,

cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/Journalism/index3f9d.html?page_id=38.

Briggs, Alicia. “Journalism in the Era of Fake News.” The Santa Barbara Independent - News,

17 Mar. 2017, www.independent.com/news/2017/mar/17/journalism-era-fake-news/.

“Technology Is Changing Journalism.” Nieman Reports Digital Demands The Challenges of

Constant Connectivity Comments, niemanreports.org/articles/technology-is-changing-

journalism/.
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Cillizza, Chris. How Journalism is Changing for the Better, in 1 Chart. WP Company LLC d/b/a

The Washington Post, Washington, 2015. ProQuest,

https://search.proquest.com/docview/1709160075?accountid=193803.

Solomon, Eileen. "Changing Curricula, Changing Industry." The Quill, vol. 99, no. 6, 2011,

pp. 12. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/917533017?accountid=193803.

Toff, B. (2017). The ‘Nate silver effect’ is changing journalism. is that good? Retrieved from
U.S. edition

Botton, Alain De. The News: a User's Manual. Hamish Hamilton, 2015.

McChesney, Robert Waterman, and Victor W. Pickard. Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out
the Lights: the Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It. New Press, 2011.

Interviews:

Amber Lineweaver.

Jordan Fong

Sources Consulted:

Preston, Peter. “Change Never Stops, but We Will Always Need Journalism.” The Guardian,

Guardian News and Media, 1 Jan. 2017, www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/01/we-

always-need-journalism-but-change-never-stops.

"Media: Journalism is changing from how we're reading to how much we're reading." Campaign,

26 Apr. 2013, p. 25. Student Resources In Context,

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A327636564/SUIC?u=wal55317&sid=SUIC&xid=44

496fd3. Accessed 11 Feb. 2019.

FT.com, Editor Paul Maidment. "Read all about it - but do it online." New Media Age, 6 Apr.

2000, p. 18. Student Resources In Context,

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http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A61415575/SUIC?u=wal55317&sid=SUIC&xid=d1d

96887. Accessed 11 Feb. 2019.

“The Future of Journalism.” Taylor and Francis Online,

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1461670X.2014.930254.

“Technology Is Changing Journalism.” Nieman Reports Digital Demands The Challenges of

Constant Connectivity Comments, niemanreports.org/articles/technology-is-changing-

journalism/.