Journalism, Blogging & New Media

Citizen Journalism is "the concept of members of the public 'playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information.'"

Consumers, news organizations, corporations, non-profits and others are adapting to the change of digital media by creating a sort of guideline book or manual of sorts. Reuters has created a handbook that states, "We are committed to aggressive journalism in all its forms, including in the field of computer-assisted reporting, but we draw the line at illegal behavior. Internet reporting is nothing more than applying the principles of sound journalism to the sometimes unusual situations thrown up in the virtual world. The same standards of sourcing, identification and verification apply. Apply the same precautions online that you would use in other forms of news-gathering and do not use anything from the internet that is not sourced in such a way that you can verify where it came from."

New forms of TV news and newspapers that are appearing on the internet are the ways that newspapers and TV news are seen on the internet. The newspaper that has become completely digital and has more options on it than sections of a regular newspaper. You can also see video clips on TV news sites or clips of reporters on newspaper sites.

Above: A traditional Detroit Free Press paper.
Below: A screen shot of an online Detroit Free Press Paper.

The shift away from TV news and toward the internet is changing journalism for better and worse, according to different critics. The Atlantic says, "In a poll of prominent members of the national news media, nearly two-thirds say the internet is hurting journalism more than it is helping. The poll, conducted by The Atlantic and National Journal, asked 43 media insiders whether, on balance, journalism has been helped more or hurt more by the rise of news consumption online. Sixty-five percent said journalism has been hurt more, while 34 percent said it has been helped more." The Atlantic continues by saying, "Those who say that news consumption on the internet is, on balance, hurting journalism note the way the online experience is changing reader habits. The 'hurt more' group also says that while the Internet offers benefits, the cost to traditional media and news-gathering is too high."

However, Reuters begs to differ with The Atlantic stating, "First, journalism is not synonymous with newspapers and today the discussion has focused too much on newspapers alone. Second, journalism will do more than survive the Internet Age, it will thrive. It will thrive as creators and publishers embrace the collaborative power of new technologies, retool production and distribution strategies and we stop trying to do everything ourselves."

The issues of the Long Tail, Creative Commons and the internet as a democratizing tool relate to the issue of journalism, blogging, and new media because it shows us that the internet is really taking over. There are so many newspapers that are going out of business and downsizing their staff and company as a whole because not many people want to buy and old fashioned newspaper any more when they can just pull up a web page and get their news and information updated to the minute.


I think that the future of journalism as a whole will be a complete down turn from where we are now. It may be because of the crappy economy that we have right now being the cause of so many newspapers collapsing, but it is not entirely based on the economy, many people just do not purchase hard copies of newspapers anymore. I hope that in the next ten years, this will change, other wise many of the online sites will start to charge people to log in when they want they online news fix. I hope that the next ten years will change journalism and newspapers for the better, and if it doesn't, then I think that we will have more and more pop up ad's on our news websites, charges being initiated for using the sites, and less actual newspapers still standing.

For more information, please visit: The Atlantic, Rueters, J-Learning, The Future of Journalism, and the Detroit Free Press.