Will Evolving Forms of Journalism Be an Improvement?

In the very beginning of the article it asked the reader to think of one way in which journalism needs to improve. The first thing that popped into my head was obtaining primary sources. I just can’t seem to shake what went on the air in San Bruno the night of the explosion. I’m not so much concerned with the fact that people were concerned about it being a plane crash, but what I am upset about is giving false information about the help that was on scene. Everyone in that situation had a right to be panicked and upset and unnerved about what was happening but what was not fair was to automatically throw blame upon the lack of people there to assist. One reporter let a young man on live television saying things like, “where is everyone to help?” I can say for a fact they were there. Did he know for instance that the first fire truck rushed to the scene and because of the extreme heat, the windshield shattered? They had to back off and go in by foot. So back to the question of what I think needs work is obtaining primary sources and I suppose this comes down to honoring some sort of journalistic code of ethics.

When we look at the title of this article it reads, “Will Evolving Forms of Journalism Be an Improvement”? The first thing that crossed my mind was; improvement from what? There is not a subtopic specific enough to start with, but I went with it as much as I could. I think the first article was not setting up a strong enough argument, repeating over and over how most innovative and newer forms of journalistic coverage do not focus on the hard-core topics such as politics, rather they follow James Carey’s model of Communication which we have talked about earlier. One thing I did like however was the term, “produsers”. Maybe I liked it just because it seemed out of the box but the meaning does make sense and it does apply to what is occurring in the journalism world today.

The side that argues for “no” is fairly concise but I think I agree with what is there. David Simon in his testimony makes one very strong point and that is that being a journalist is a profession, it requires years and years of research and knowledge. Participatory journalism is more of an “add as you go” or “add as you find”. It seems silly to compare a story that has been written by a journalist of twenty years to the same topic written by a civilian journalist. While the information may be strong in both cases it is obvious that the journalist who has been doing this a majority of his/her life will have a better story because of pure knowledge.