Write it down or type it out?
Communication is the key to build relationships with people, journalism is a way to convey ideas on paper in order to communicate; digital journalism is a new way to not only spread ideas, but also connect people in different parts of world in the most possible, effective, and fastest way. Older generation will still have the habit of reading newspaper and listening to broadcasting while today more and more people choose to get and hear news from digital journalism online.
When I was in grade school, I started to write diary every day. At first, I was just basically recording my day, and I did not even know how to write all the characters in Chinese; so my diary looks like a mixture with Chinese pronunciations spelled with English letters, and actual characters. I kept this habit until I was in high school because of the heavy time-consuming school works I had. When I think about the time I writing diaries, I feel like it is a simple for me to write down my thoughts no matter they are valuable, right or wrong enough for people to actual read. It is a place for me to express my emotions and take a rest.
At the same time when I look at digital journalism today, it somehow has the same idea of dairy which is a place to express writer’s opinions and thoughts about one specific topic which can be anything. But the difference is I can keep my emotions and thoughts in my diary and no one else will know about them unless I show them, while all these articles online today will get thousands or even millions views every day by different people who may have different opinions with yours. What’s more, they can comment on your article and every one else will see these comments, and there will start a constant argument or discussion online about this one simple article. Traditional journalism does have similar things like book review or peer reviews, but they will never have the same response in terms of time and efficiency.
Almost everything is digital now and most consumers will still not accept this truth because then they want to make adjustments of their consuming habits. It is always hard for new trends and ideas to grow at first, but the pressure from old fashion journalism is the actual motivation which push digital journalism forward. Here at GC, communication is a big department with certain amount of students. I used to a communication major with a Public Relationship emphasis, and I still remember the courses I need to take for that emphasis. They are all those classical traditional wonderful communication course for people who are willing to spend times on reading all these theories. I am not saying theories are bad, but learning how to adapt to new era of communication today is more important at least for their career sake. They do need a course which they have the opportunities to learn about social media, and what they are, how they work, and how to use them as an effective way to communicate with target audience instead of seeing them as bad examples of distractions, advertising and so on. This course can be a combination of theory learning and actual practice online. Papyrus is a experimenting field where students can actually combine digital and journalism skills together to see how digital journalism work under the guidance of school which does kind of sound unfair but it looks the same if you decide to work for New York Times or Huffington post one day. I also think digital journalism is not the enemy of traditional one, they can work together as a new way to spread ideas and thoughts to more and more people in this world, the potential influence that an article or a paragraph has is never measurable no matter it is hardcopy or digital.
Whether you decide to write it down or type it out, you are always telling your audience about your idea about this piece of new happened a few hours ago or this one topic you have been thinking about all day along like this blog I am writing now. Ideas will never die, the form is definitely crucial for spreading out the idea, but at today’s world, embracing the new form of communication is a smart choice for people who are willing to share ideas with others.
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