A Thought from Mass Comm. Class

I often tell people that I am a Journalism major, and their first question always seems to be,”So how do you feel about the fact that print journalism is being replaced by online blogging and instant news sources?” It's a loaded question to ask, but I've had a while to contemplate it. As technology increases, so does the demand and general expectation to have information faster and individually filtered on command. And with sites such as Twitter on the rise, there seems to be a non-stop stream of words and information. But after reading this article (URL attached below), an important question has been raised in my mind. How much of this “news” is true and valid information?

I do this thing sometimes where I try and see how long I can talk without stopping the verbal-flow of my conversation with myself. The longest I've ever gone is ten minutes, and that's only because my roommate got tired of hearing me ramble and stopped me. But what I've noticed is that to fill the empty spaces that pop up in normal conversation I had to throw in a lot of random, pointless stuff. They were gap-fillers, they had no real meaning in my “conversation.” I think this is what happens with instant news reporting nowadays. There is this pressing stress to be the fastest to stream information and the first to do so, and this is where a lot of mis-information gets out: through this stress-driven need to fill the lag in time that factual reporting creates.

But the fact is that although we have disillusioned ourselves to think we need news on the when and where we want, the truth is that we really just want it. It's the basic struggle of a technologically growing culture that digs into the human desire to have the best and newest of everything, including news. So we decide to take quantity over quality. I mean, the rumors get sorted out eventually, and a little false alarm every once in a while is good for our cardiovascular systems.

But let us not forget that we still have the dying breed of print journalism. It might be the dinosaur of communication, but it sure is a lot more accurate and fact-laden than any other crowd-sourced media outlet found readily on the internet. Facts are checked, police and medical records are searched, the truth is spoken (unless it's The Onion). Even though there is a lag in time, the information is much more reliable than anything posted on Twitter or Facebook.

So I guess what it comes all down to is where your needs and wants lie. If you feel that you really need to hear what's going on 24/7, regardless of truth or accuracy, then keep following your online sources, but if you're okay with not hearing about the worlds problems every second of your life and relish your daily, factual newspaper, then that is the route I recommend. It's all a matter of the balance between quality or quantity.

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/boston-manhunt-2013-4/