Turn to trusted sources, whether online or in print
Last week, the UA Department of Journalism presented “When the Ink Runs Dry: A Forum on the Future of the News Business,” a national symposium focused on the changes journalists will face in upcoming years.
And there will be many changes. There already are. The Traveler is now a daily online news organization, and all UA journalism students will soon have professors who teach them not only the basics of news reporting and writing, but also the fundamentals of shooting videos, recording podcasts, taking photos and maintaining a blog.
At “The Fog of New Media,” one of the three presentations offered during the symposium, panelists discussed the excitement Internet journalism has created in newsrooms across the country. But, they said, it’s also created serious doubts.
They wondered if an abundance of news sources has just created more confusion, if less fact-checking and more opinion-spewing has created too much “noise” and not enough “news,” if online news stories are actually permanent.
Some of these questions are still unanswered. But we know media organizations are moving in the right direction, and the journalism department is, too.
The question, then, is what room online journalism leaves for newspapers.
In an advertisement today in the Lifestyles section, the Newspaper Project urges readers to continue picking up the paper.
“In these complex times,” it says, “newspaper newsrooms continue to produce the most trusted journalism available anywhere, thanks to teams of dedicated, professional reporters and editors.”
We tend to agree. But what we’ve learned through symposiums like that hosted by the journalism department is that whether the trusted journalism is on paper or on a computer screen, on TV or on the radio, doesn’t really matter at all.
