To start off, I do not consider myself, or anyone of my generation to be a “traditional journalist”. We have been fortunate enough to grow up with the technology that is so pervasive in journalism now, and as such, most of it should come naturally to us. My personal issue as I get further into the field is obtaining the equipment itself. As a journalist now, we are more independent and to be efficient, should have our own equipment. But as a college student, that is not always possible. Although I still have a lot to learn, editing videos and audio and even writing for the Internet is not a problem for me, but getting the equipment and software for it is. Especially being unpaid and having to devote so much time to other studies. There is also so much new technology constantly coming out that it is difficult to keep up with all of it, though again we are expected to, and my personal feelings about certain technology make me apprehensive to consuming it blindly.
As journalists, though we report on the world around us, we are often disconnected from it, and the technology that now controls our product is making that distant even more prominent. Stories are reported without thinking because they have to break within seconds, bloggers report on news without talking to a single source. While it is inevitable that this will happen, as the world as a whole is traveling in the same direction; as those who have a hand in how life is portrayed, I wonder if we’re even supposed to care about such things. And while that independence has created a whole new sector for job finding, news organizations that I once thought reputable and would like to be a part of are crumbling before my eyes and I feel I have no choice now but to act independently to maintain some integrity. But I do fully embrace the challenge of integrating the new and old schools of journalism, hopefully extracting the best of each.
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