Online News

I'm not sure where to start or what to say, but, after reading the chapters about online news, I suppose I can come up with a few thoughts. First off, I'm aware that journalism is heading into the online world and dying in the print world. And while that's exciting, it also scares me a bit. I decided I wanted to do journalism when I was in third grade; it was the 90s and the Internet was just becoming popular. Why did I decide I wanted to become a journalist? Because I like to write. Really, it's that simple. I had no interest in multimedia, interactivity or on-demand delivery (partly because I didn't know what any of those things were). When I got into the J-school, I was honestly pretty angry that I had to learn how to do so many things (videos, etc.) that didn't involve writing. It wasn't what I thought I had signed up for, but in reality, these skills are just as important as the traditional skills of knowing how to write, report and edit.


When thinking about what news is and what it's becoming, it makes sense that all of these skills would mesh together. Online news must appeal to a slightly different audience, one that expects news to be convenient. While at work this summer, I always kept CNN pulled up on my computer, but I could only look at it in short bursts. I needed headlines that immediately caught my attention, and I needed news that I could skim. When I felt like I was being watched, I needed to be able to pop in my earbuds, pull up a video at the top of a news story and listen to it as I wrote. And perhaps most importantly, I needed the headlines to change often. I worked 8 hours a day; if the headlines didn't change once an hour or so, I had read everything that sounded interesting before I even began working. That's what online news has to be, and honestly I find that few local newspapers for small towns have those qualities. I don't find out anything about what's going on in my hometown from the newspaper because it's not convenient and it's not up-to-date. When I want to know something, I go to Facebook. There I find information relevant to me, along with pictures and videos to keep me entertained, and it is constantly updated.


Now the question is, how do we make online news convenient for small-town newspapers? The easiest answer I can think of is that it has to be in a Facebook format. I have no idea what that looks like. All I know is that people need to be able to discuss their news online. They need it now, and they need recent and relevant stories. Multiple types of media need to be used, and (my favorite part) traditional journalism still needs to hold a place. A Facebook format may be part of the answer, but news needs to be more than that. I'm a reporter. I can't just throw aside those news values that I was taught. They have to find a place amid all this changing media. Integrating everything together is the key, but I can't yet say how to execute that plan.