Last semester, I taught a course in the Journalism and Media Studies department at Rutgers University. The course was titled Development of Mass Media, and the students were an enthusiastic and eclectic bunch, coming to it with various perspectives and expectations. On the first day, I asked them what issue in contemporary media intrigued them the most. They all answered the death of the newspaper. (I have been informed by my successor that the obsession du jour is Twitter in her class.) Perhaps those that answered with such solemnity at the death of the newspaper were victims of the contagion of an easy answer for the ever-awkward first day ice breaker, but their discomfort at the loss of newsprint persisted throughout the course.
This trend was made all the more bizarre, when my suspicions were confirmed: none of these wannabe journalists had subscriptions to print publications. Who would want to pay for that, knowing full well the pages will only be used to soak up spilled PBR and the vomit of first-years? The most frustrating question for me was: why couldn't I get them to be comfortable with their own news reading habits?
The students may have been onto something with their worry over the death of the newspaper; their current news reading habits don't feel like reading news. I don't consider myself in the upper reaches of my well-informed friends, but I stay fairly up-to-date with my understandings of the current workings of the world.
I'll be clear here. Too often we're ashamed of what or how we read. My news-reading habits are set in stone. I get most of my news by reading headlines and/or following links from friends' Facebook posts (mostly pointing to New York Times, Slate, queerty, LA Times, and The Guardian). I'm also a religious reader of the New Yorker. When I had cable, I'd do laundry and make dinner to MSNBC. For years, I was an avid Perez reader; those salacious headlines gave way to the ones on tech blogs, mostly hosted by Wired. There is also the film publication that I work for, indieWIRE. I read that and our competitors regularly. I admire several film writers greatly, but I'd be detracting from the point of this if I listed those favorites here. Writing this, I realize that I don't much read the gossip blogs and the other sensational that I used to be obsessed with. Upon reflection, I'm able to get that news through the headlines of friends; what use is it actually reading something on Perez.
I find my news-finding abilities fairly adequate. There is always a wish that there was more time to fully grasp the world's more complex situations. (New developments in the recent Egypt unrest often had to be summarized for me by friends; with a general understanding of what was going on, I found it hard to keep with new developments and their ramifications.) Some situations change so quickly that it's hard not to be left in the dust. One cannot be expected to use 24/7 news coverage to wait for the news to happen.
As we now have "journalists" in all corners of the world: geographically everywhere, ready to go in every bio/chem/tech/phys/health lab, ready to follow celebrities around anywhere, it becomes impossible to follow news everywhere. Enough about the ability to consume more content; with the ability to produce more content, shouldn't there be more opportunities for more good journalism.
With i-Reporters, citizen journalists, and all the catchphrases that simply translate to free news content for the corporations that own the means of dissemination, there certainly is an infinite opportunity to "do" news.
The curse of the journalism degree, or the English degree, is that translates to a degree in public relations for most graduates who get communications-related jobs. This is a natural consequence of our corporatized culture. The graduated journalism major has been certified for a job that CNN tells me "i" can do.
The successful journalist is not skilled at "journalism." They have a passion for knowledge of a certain kind. The Wired team is a bunch of nerds that have been hobbyists, collectors of random facts, enthusiasts of all sorts, for their lives. New Yorker writers often come from the industry they write about or have followed it obsessively for years. I often mention the Cahiers du Cinema as a wonderful ideal of journalism in my own field -- practitioners spouting off about others in their craft. Filmmakers' blogs, as independent and hidden as they are, don't do the same trick. The value of these "expert" journalists is in being informed, of being experts, of being subjective (sometimes called, gasp!, bias).
The average journalism student too often comes to their course of study vaguely interested in something, and wants to be a journalist of x. But instead of majoring in x or something close to it (I'm trying to imagine what the closest thing to a major in "celebrities" would be.), most students take their passive interest in x to be enough to motivate their career.
The field's obsession with objectivity makes students afraid of getting to close to the subjects they're interested in. I never studied journalism, but I've carved out a niche in the film journalism world. Who knows how long this will last, but I've spent several years devoting time and energy to all aspects of the film world. And I'm incredibly biased. It's what allows me to pick stories worth writing. Otherwise, why write?
The future of journalism comes not in treating at a job, a career option, that has a future. The Huffington Post just signed a multi-million dollar deal. The writers will still not get paid. Soon enough, the best of HuffPo writers will move on to write pieces sporadically for publications that recognize their worth. Or they'll realize that the labor of writing isn't worth the publicity that comes with it. The future of journalism, though, is realizing exactly that, that not unlike academic writing, journalism is an opportunity for informed citizens to allow their ever-valuable biases to live in public. Once more ways are found to organize these smart voices (Facebook and HuffPo are good prototypes, but they also only benefit the wallets of a few at the top). Surely, there has to be an option that benefits more the readers and the writers more directly and efficiently. There will still be a place for the devoted few who want and earn their space writing news exclusively, but this should only be the goal when you've got the insatiable quest for knowledge -- the full picture.
I'm not asking for all people doing journalism to expect to go unpaid -- but I would encourage us to look outside the newsroom for voices. Sometimes that means combing YouTube for future iReporters. More often, it means realizing how many experts, on various and diverse topics, we have around the world.
When it comes down to it, I'd rather a journalist of the Middle East know Jordan over gerunds.
This trend was made all the more bizarre, when my suspicions were confirmed: none of these wannabe journalists had subscriptions to print publications. Who would want to pay for that, knowing full well the pages will only be used to soak up spilled PBR and the vomit of first-years? The most frustrating question for me was: why couldn't I get them to be comfortable with their own news reading habits?
The students may have been onto something with their worry over the death of the newspaper; their current news reading habits don't feel like reading news. I don't consider myself in the upper reaches of my well-informed friends, but I stay fairly up-to-date with my understandings of the current workings of the world.
I'll be clear here. Too often we're ashamed of what or how we read. My news-reading habits are set in stone. I get most of my news by reading headlines and/or following links from friends' Facebook posts (mostly pointing to New York Times, Slate, queerty, LA Times, and The Guardian). I'm also a religious reader of the New Yorker. When I had cable, I'd do laundry and make dinner to MSNBC. For years, I was an avid Perez reader; those salacious headlines gave way to the ones on tech blogs, mostly hosted by Wired. There is also the film publication that I work for, indieWIRE. I read that and our competitors regularly. I admire several film writers greatly, but I'd be detracting from the point of this if I listed those favorites here. Writing this, I realize that I don't much read the gossip blogs and the other sensational that I used to be obsessed with. Upon reflection, I'm able to get that news through the headlines of friends; what use is it actually reading something on Perez.
I find my news-finding abilities fairly adequate. There is always a wish that there was more time to fully grasp the world's more complex situations. (New developments in the recent Egypt unrest often had to be summarized for me by friends; with a general understanding of what was going on, I found it hard to keep with new developments and their ramifications.) Some situations change so quickly that it's hard not to be left in the dust. One cannot be expected to use 24/7 news coverage to wait for the news to happen.
As we now have "journalists" in all corners of the world: geographically everywhere, ready to go in every bio/chem/tech/phys/health lab, ready to follow celebrities around anywhere, it becomes impossible to follow news everywhere. Enough about the ability to consume more content; with the ability to produce more content, shouldn't there be more opportunities for more good journalism.
With i-Reporters, citizen journalists, and all the catchphrases that simply translate to free news content for the corporations that own the means of dissemination, there certainly is an infinite opportunity to "do" news.
The curse of the journalism degree, or the English degree, is that translates to a degree in public relations for most graduates who get communications-related jobs. This is a natural consequence of our corporatized culture. The graduated journalism major has been certified for a job that CNN tells me "i" can do.
The successful journalist is not skilled at "journalism." They have a passion for knowledge of a certain kind. The Wired team is a bunch of nerds that have been hobbyists, collectors of random facts, enthusiasts of all sorts, for their lives. New Yorker writers often come from the industry they write about or have followed it obsessively for years. I often mention the Cahiers du Cinema as a wonderful ideal of journalism in my own field -- practitioners spouting off about others in their craft. Filmmakers' blogs, as independent and hidden as they are, don't do the same trick. The value of these "expert" journalists is in being informed, of being experts, of being subjective (sometimes called, gasp!, bias).
The average journalism student too often comes to their course of study vaguely interested in something, and wants to be a journalist of x. But instead of majoring in x or something close to it (I'm trying to imagine what the closest thing to a major in "celebrities" would be.), most students take their passive interest in x to be enough to motivate their career.
The field's obsession with objectivity makes students afraid of getting to close to the subjects they're interested in. I never studied journalism, but I've carved out a niche in the film journalism world. Who knows how long this will last, but I've spent several years devoting time and energy to all aspects of the film world. And I'm incredibly biased. It's what allows me to pick stories worth writing. Otherwise, why write?
The future of journalism comes not in treating at a job, a career option, that has a future. The Huffington Post just signed a multi-million dollar deal. The writers will still not get paid. Soon enough, the best of HuffPo writers will move on to write pieces sporadically for publications that recognize their worth. Or they'll realize that the labor of writing isn't worth the publicity that comes with it. The future of journalism, though, is realizing exactly that, that not unlike academic writing, journalism is an opportunity for informed citizens to allow their ever-valuable biases to live in public. Once more ways are found to organize these smart voices (Facebook and HuffPo are good prototypes, but they also only benefit the wallets of a few at the top). Surely, there has to be an option that benefits more the readers and the writers more directly and efficiently. There will still be a place for the devoted few who want and earn their space writing news exclusively, but this should only be the goal when you've got the insatiable quest for knowledge -- the full picture.
I'm not asking for all people doing journalism to expect to go unpaid -- but I would encourage us to look outside the newsroom for voices. Sometimes that means combing YouTube for future iReporters. More often, it means realizing how many experts, on various and diverse topics, we have around the world.
When it comes down to it, I'd rather a journalist of the Middle East know Jordan over gerunds.
1 comment:
your blog is very informative.......
WLCI Media School also offers programmes in mass communication and media production.
Mass Media Courses | Mass Communication Institute
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