Newspapers are soon to be a forgotten thing in the world we live in today. But it’s such a scary thought isn’t it? To think that our children might have no idea growing up what an actual newspaper is. By that time, with the way that things are progressing right now, everything will have turned into electronic communication, thus using the internet to replace hard copies of a newspaper. The industry will have to change, after all, they can’t call themselves newspapers anymore. They will have to become media outlets, as they change with the times.
Things have been changing for quite some time now. Having been around the Milwaukee area at some point for most of my life, and being interested in Sports I always had read the Sports section in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. That is, the print version of the MJS. It was fun to read, even as a kid. The beauty of it was that it was transportable, you could take it anywhere in read it, and you didn’t need a laptop or smart phone to be able to do it. About two years ago though, I myself stopped reading the print version of the newspaper, and instead just read what was available online.
Things have been changing for quite some time now. Having been around the Milwaukee area at some point for most of my life, and being interested in Sports I always had read the Sports section in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. That is, the print version of the MJS. It was fun to read, even as a kid. The beauty of it was that it was transportable, you could take it anywhere in read it, and you didn’t need a laptop or smart phone to be able to do it. About two years ago though, I myself stopped reading the print version of the newspaper, and instead just read what was available online.
Something changed though as the years went on, something that showed that the industry was making a very prominent push towards the electronic movement. For years, even when the Journal Sentinel was put up online, the Sportswriters all had been tabbed as ‘columnists.’ There was a search bar under the sports section that led you to choose your favorite columnist so you could read his article for that day. But as the industry has found its way more into the electronic world, these people who are certified to bring us the news we had been used to had been dubbed as ‘Bloggers.’ Now, instead of the choose your columnist feature, the MJS features a page where you can choose the writer you want to read by searching the ‘Blog’ section.
That move right there was crazy for me to see. It showed how we, the citizens of the United States, are evolving into a much more online based community. Computer mediated communications have been taking over for a while now, almost replacing the real world that we once knew. After all, if it wasn’t, then this would not be possible for me to write right now. The companies who owned the newspapers had no choice but to focus more on the electronic based viewership. When the newspaper came out it was intended to give the people what they wanted to see daily. Now, the world seems like it is 100 times faster, and everybody has to have their updated news, sports scores, and weather up to the minute. It is just a sign of the times changing in the world we live in today. And as so many newspapers will go out of business, more electronic based media outlets will form. That’s where the world is heading today.
I think that it will also affect journalists in a very substantial way as well. Now that things are all electronically, they have to be on their toes non-stop, because breaking news could happen at any second. And because they are the experts in their field through the eyes of the citizens, they need to be the ones to break the story when it happens, up to the minute. For a journalist, this could be very frustrating. It would almost make it seem like a doctor, always on call, whenever the opportunity knocks. That’s a good thing and a bad thing in this universe. We as a society are demanding more, and it is just not fair to the journalists to expect them to be able to keep up.
Jimmy Majewski
Very nice job on writing the piece. Times have changed for sure, and the way people have got their news has also changed. I guess I am kind of old school because I still like getting a lot of my sports from the daily newspaper I happen to get, but I know I am in the minority there. I really liked your point about our children and their children growing up possibly not even seeing a newspaper. Before going to college there wasn't a day without me seeing a daily newspaper.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you brought up journalists, and how it affects us. However, I have to question your thinking that journalists may not be able to keep up with the times. Firstly, for future journalists, are we not learning about the times today, in this class, and in others. I think we will be just fine. Some journalists may struggle at first with the times, and being on their toes, but I think journalists will be on the times.