I am concerned and perplexed as to what the future of news may be. We will always need to know what is going on in the world and in our community. Newspapers have dwindled since the boom of the internet and many have gone under especially with recent economic woes. I am quite sure that my children will not be doing paper routs to earn extra cash. People just don’t read print media like they used to. Even books are being replaced by fancy technology like Digital Readers, (I admit that I would really like one of these!) Everything is going digital! But how will the news media survive? Sure, they have a very important online presence, but the dynamics are changing. The World Wide Web is a pretty amazing place and people can get anything they want at their fingertips. And news online is free! This means that local circulation of big news will be taken over by the big guys. And the rest will be left to a few local websites and the world of Blogs. The world of Blogs that did not exist ten years ago is an entirely new and very significant industry within news media. Blogs coupled with programs like Twitter may very well be taking over the old idea of a “press conference.” Really, why would anyone go through all the effort of a press conference if they can just make their announcements via their blog/twitter? Even Obama has caught on to this! Besides, this takes the direct confrontation out of it… they can think through their comments before responding on the spot with something they wish they had thought about first. The challenge with news blogs is that the public won’t know who to trust. Anyone can write and get “published,” (which may become a word of the past when it comes to news.) The internet is already overwhelmed with half-truths and extremely biased stories/points of view. It’s tough to know who you can trust. The laws cannot keep up with technology… copyright, libel, freedom of speech, privacy...TV news has and will also be hit by the changing times. The six o’clock news will be reserved for the old folks who think digital refers to using your fingers… Fewer viewers will wait to get the weather report or sports update when they already saw it on their iphone or Yahoo desktop ten minutes earlier. Radio will survive as long as we are the auto dependent society that we are. And Magazines have already taken their hit but they will continue to decorate grocery store isles and airport shops.
How did you hear about Michael Jackson’s death? Was it a text, twitter or Yahoo home page, or a friend’s blog, or somebody’s facebook post? Probably not a newspaper or TV evening news. I imagine the time lapse between actual events and dissemination to the public is ten times the speed that it was five years ago and 100 times the speed of fifty years ago. It’s pretty amazing really. So what is the future of news? Are we in the midst of revolutionizing how we will hear about the next world tragedy? Are we on the brink of an industry out of jobs or just changing the medium? I imagine that this has been a frequent conversation at the major networks and publishing companies. The stories will still need to be written and pictures taken, but our children will not know news like we did. “The weather man” may become a mythical character that just gives away our age.
