Many people like to argue that journalism is a dying art form, a pointless major and a hopeless career path. Because of these reasons, many cannot fathom why college students today would choose to pursue such a degree.
The reality of the situation is that journalism is not dying. Instead, it is changing and evolving. It is transforming.
While newspapers and print media seem to be losing money and becoming smaller and smaller, journalism is not. The world needs good, solid journalists who report hard news and unbiased facts, not fluff.
While many people turn to technology and digital platforms to receive their news, the world still needs writers to write the articles and produce the content. There will always be a need for journalists. But what most people do not consider is that there will always be a need for print journalism and newspapers.
While many articles on various sites like Facebook, BuzzFeed and SnapChat, can provide helpful, informative news stories, they also produce a lot of fluff stories. Many media outlets like these examples depend on the amount of clicks and views they get so they tailor the news to readers’ interest, taking into account whether or not it will get people to read it. But we need newspapers to cover the hard and investigative news.
Another point is that even if a person decides not to be a reporter, the skills of communicating, writing and analyzing are transferable to many different types of careers. Journalism is a necessary part of today’s society and it helps keep the world connected and informed. It should provide an unbiased platform of news for people to understand what’s going on around in the world around them. Overall, we need more good journalists and we need newspapers.
Recently on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver he explained the importance of journalist and how the journalism world is in a financial crisis.
He claims society does not take journalism seriously and that has led to a financial downfall in hard-hitting stories because the stories about cute dogs have started to take precedence over actual news.
The fluff stories, or “click bait” has made journalism a joke in a sense.
The fact that a well known comedian has taken notice of these problems within the journalism industry reiterates that there needs to be a shift in the societal and economical value of real journalism.
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