Journalism's Job: Changed or Unchanged?

At its core, the job of the working journalist is indeed still unchanged. Journalists must still strive to report important newsworthy stories to readers in a manner that is both credible and fair.

The only things that have changed in the field of Journalism are the means in which journalists communicate the news to people, the higher competition in reporting news stories, and the higher level of scrutiny they must face due to avid, opinionated, fact checking bloggers.

The biggest change in how journalists report stories to the public is the obvious jump from the newspaper page to the webpage. Many newspapers across the country are losing readers and shutting down at a rapid pace due to the ability to read newspaper stories online for free (See newspaperdeathwatch.com).

Therefore, journalists must unlearn what they have learned over the course of their careers and adapt their reporting style for the Internet. The Internet is a fast-paced environment and online journalists must be able to report their stories quickly and accurately or else they will run the risk of losing their audience to another news source or another entirely unrelated website. This is not to say that journalists did not have to worry about reporting their stories in a timely manner in the past, but now they must develop ways to hold their readers' attention even more so due to the countless distractions someone can encounter online.

These distractions help create a greater level of competition that journalists must endure to keep their readers coming back. Other news sites, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc. all have the potential to sway people away from journalists' stories. However, journalists must still maintain a code of ethics while gathering the news at a speedy and accurate pace. Unfortunately, some journalists fabricate stories in an effort to attract readers such as former New York Times reporter, Jayson Blair, or former reporter for The New Republic, Stephen Glass.

The possible inaccuracies, whether they are intentional or unintentional, within a journalist's article are more likely to be discovered in the realm of online news. Before many newspapers decided to publish stories online, the only fact checkers a journalist had were the ones who were employed by the newspaper. But at the present time when a journalist submits his or her story to be checked, not only is it checked by the newspaper's fact checkers, but it can also be checked by countless bloggers. Dan Rather, a long-time respected journalist for CBS News, was fired for presenting inaccurate information about former President Bush's National Guard service, which had been uncovered by bloggers. Journalists have been and always should be careful of what they present to the public as fact, but with the Internet's ability to give anyone with a computer and a connection a voice, journalists must be more cautious with their reporting.

At its core, the job of a journalist will always be the same. Journalists will continue to report the news in a fast and accurate manner. The only questions that will challenge every new generation of journalists are: How will they report the news? How will they maintain their code of ethics within the new technological era that emerges? And how many people will be reading and analyzing their stories?