Online News Challenges Traditional Journalism

Social media has taken over the world of journalism and the original methods of producing stories.

From starting off as print to TV and now the World of social media, the possibilities have been proven to be endless in this industry.

Journalists have been forced to improvise and utilize whatever medium their audience uses. In today’s time, that platform is now social media.

Today, people can find almost all news stations, newspapers, magazines and radio stations with social media pages because they know where they can connect with their audience.

Prior to the age of social media, it was not as easy to connect with an audience and it would have been through different methods.

Journalists who worked in the industry prior to the social media revolution have it the hardest.

These journalists went to school, received a degree and are now told that they need to do things differently or they need to now learn how to operate social media.

That also brings attention to the commonly heard saying that journalism is ‘dying.’

“Journalism is alive and well. In fact, this is one of the most exciting times to teach, study, and practice journalism.” Said the author of Mobile and Social Media Journalism, Anthony Adornato.”

It makes sense why people think that because there was a time when people would pay money to have the news delivered to their doorstep or the only method of keeping up with the news was through reading the paper.

What a lot of people do not realize is that these journalists have also been the ones producing the content that they are reading online.

That can be a great thing. Breaking news often comes through social media and people can be informed at any given time of the day.

There are also negatives that derive from this method. The problem with online news comes from the spread of misinformation from unverified sources.

“Real journalism is now competing with fake news. What’s so interesting is that social media platforms were never intended for news. Take Snapchat — this certainly was not launched as a place to get news.” Adornato said.

“Yet, since these are the places where so many people are living out their lives, they’ve become the go-to platforms for news distribution and engagement.”