This post is actually a first draft of a research-based essay that I am writing for English class. Since I didn’t really know how to start off this essay with research, I decided to approach the first draft as though it were one of my blog posts, and would hold off on integrating other sources until later revisions (and some initial feedback from my professor). Certainly if you have any constructive criticism, feel free to comment, as it can only help me to produce a stronger final product. Even then, it’s still nice to get my thoughts on this subject out in the open without being constrained by any requirements whatsoever.
Welcome to the end of another decade in American history. That’s right. With all of this “change” stuff sweeping the country this year, perhaps you forgot that the 2010s will be sweeping in in just a few months’ time. Looking back at the 2000s, the “golden millennial decade” (I actually just made that term up), it’s painstakingly obvious that a whole lot has changed in this country in the past ten years. But probably nothing else has changed as dramatically as the media.
Think about it. When the 2000 presidential election came down to a great big mess in Florida, or when the 9/11 attacks happened, how did those stories spread across the country? You most likely heard about those on the TV news, or if you were a bit on the slower side, you read about them in the newspaper. Nouns such as “blogs,” “podcasts,” or “tweets” weren’t even a part of our consciousness yet. Now fast forward to this year. The January 2009 plane landing in the Hudson River first broke on Twitter. This summer, journalists who were barred from covering the controversy and protests following the Iranian elections turned to the internet and social networks to find news postings and online videos from people who were on the ground in Iran. Newspapers across the country are shutting down every week or converting into online-only reporting. People get their news not just from television, radio, and newspapers, but now they also get their news from blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, aggregated news sources via Google, and a whole host of other sources. Not only can they get their news whenever they want from wherever they are, but they now have the power to choose the news they’ll use, and even make it themselves.
“Traditional” news media has realized this, and has attempted to catch up to the trend by trying to get “hip” to this new social media realm, with CNN arguably leading the charge. In 2006, they introduced their “iReport” feature, inviting anyone to submit videos, photos, or just text that they considered newsworthy. CNN would then identify certain iReports that they deemed newsworthy (and claimed to have “vetted” for factual accuracy) to air on their network. Late in the 2008 presidential campaign, CNN also took the lead in broadening out to incorporating existing social networks as well, most notably Twitter, and to a lesser extent, YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace. These moves have definitely been popular, as CNN’s competitors have also hopped on board with their own iReport-equivalents, along with their own use of blogs and social networks. Many people, especially in the tech world (like in this article from Mashable) have praised the networks for adopting and pushing social media forward. But is this big move to social media really pushing journalism and freedom of speech forward? Or is it just using Web 2.0 as a fad to add entertainment value to the news? Or furthermore, is it trading actual, experienced, vetted journalism for cheap crowd-sourced anecdotes?
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