The Future of Journalism

"But isn't that a dying profession?" is the response I most hate to hear (and most often get) from people I tell I'm majoring in journalism.

First of all, journalism isn't really a profession...

Second, this isn't the case at all and I'm getting a little tired of defending my career choice.

Jayson DeMers wrote in the Huffington Post that people are turning to social media for their news. While this may be true, will this continue much longer when the public realizes how unreliable their family and friends are?

Last week Main Street was blocked off. A few people told me they had seen this but that they had no idea why. I knew though. I knew there had been a car accident and a motorcyclist had been hit even though I didn't even see the barricade on Main. How did I know? I listened to the radio in the morning and a journalist told me.

Last year when there was a fire at Speedway International Inc. I was told by a family member that "St. Boniface exploded." St. Boniface is still standing today and clearly this entire area of the city did not blow up.

You want the truth about a news event? Go to a journalist. As social media stops being so new people will begin to realize that this isn't always the best way to find reliable information. Kind of like Wikipedia. So will this "profession" die? I think not.

Chad Skelton discovered that there were approximately the same number of journalists working in Canada as there were a decade prior. These journalists are employed and the number of free-lancers was down from the previous census.

Skelton argues that there are likely fewer traditional newspaper journalists, and more in specialty papers, such as business papers.

I agree. But I would add that those staying in traditional newspaper have had to drastically change the way they work and the papers themselves have to change how they run.

People are busy and won't pay for what they can get for free. Journalists need to understand this and stop charging citizens to read long news articles.

Metro, a free paper found globally, gets it. With short 400 word articles it's easy to fly through the paper first thing in the morning and get a good sense of the most important things going on in the city, country and world. Tweets from journalists at the paper, such as Bernice Pontanilla, while out gathering information for stories give even smaller pieces of news for the busy public throughout the day. Why get the news from your neighbour's tweets when Pontanilla has more reliable info in the same place. This model is clearly working for them--they're growing 12 per cent each year.

A smart journalist today can't simply go out, gather facts, head back to the office and produce a full, long and complete news story. A journalist has to be someone with credibility who heads off into the world to gather a news story they can share with the public in a few different formats and sizes in order to attract as many news consumers as possible.