The Good The Bad and The Ugly: Our Beloved J School (Cont.)
October 5, 2006
The Ugly…
So why is newspaper circulation at an all time low? The Blogosphere? Maybe. I’m leaning towards cause its boring! How do I know this? Because I have normal friends who tell me so. I hate to break the news to all the journalist (and all those aspiring to be ), but its true.
I can hear all you transparency-loving reporters asking me where are your statistics? Data? Cause people tell me so. Am I the only one who knows people that play sports every weekend, fall asleep playing the PS2, and get ridiculously drunk at least once a week? Before you judge, guess what, they are all college educated with decent jobs.
While society and the world around us have changed, the writing in journalism has refused to evolve with the times. People read fewer newspapers because it feels like reading a Shakespearean play. News writing today is too structured with very little fluidity. Why can’t we say “F*** the pyramid, I like hexagons better!”
Our J school is supposed to represent the future of journalism, yet I see no new innovative writing methods being taught. I respect the professors chosen to teach the school, but what about getting someone who is a pioneer in new writing techniques. How about someone from less traditional media like the Village Voice?
Quality of news does not have to suffer because it has seeds of creativity that would engage those who fall asleep with the PS2.
Interactive journalism seems to be a step towards the future. While blogs might be last forever they will never eliminate paper based newspapers (this argument is for another post). The reason some readers are moving from newspapers to blogs is not because of the technology, but because many blogs are written with an engaging fluidity.
A method has to be discovered that mixes the elements of quality news and engaging creativity.
The school should be planting these seeds to get more average readers involved. Instead it seems as we could be creating a whole new generation of robotic journalist writing for the pseudo-intellectuals of Wall Street and Park Ave.
Just My Thoughts 
October 5, 2006 at 2:52 pm
“While blogs might be last forever they will never eliminate paper based newspapers (this argument is for another post).”
You don’t need the “be.”
inre: the bad…
George Carlin once said that more people write poetry than read it. I’d argue the same holds true for the blogosphere.
It’s a self-sustained clusterfuck of egomaniacs. Most bloggers aren’t concerned with reaching an audience per-say. At least they shouldn’t be. (The good blogs fill in the gaps in news coverage… or entertain).
Sense of community and interaction make blogs appealing – much like XBox online or World of Warcraft (you have to see last night’s South Park episode). And while it a seemingly gated community, there is growth. Only in the wrong direction.
There’s many people willing to write and not many willing to read. Which brings me back to audience consideration…
The Huffington Post, The Superficial, Daily Kos are open to many contributors and bloggers and in this sense, are electronic mutations of your daily paper. And it’s in this specialization that the (unfortunate) future lies. Specialization and one-sided journalism.
I’m going to go write a story about a horse fucking a pig. Maybe it’ll get some people to put down the booze and PS2 controller.
April 9, 2016 at 7:12 am
Two comments, one: I guess it’s better if you add the -quality parameter to the mogrify command to avoid degrading ‘even more’ the JPEG (yes, quality Click https://zhoutest.wordpress.com/