A Message From Mari

If it wasn’t obvious by now, I’m a young person. Due to this, much of my consumption of journalism has been digital (except in my childhood, with my grandfather handing me the comix page from his newspapers after I read him the current events sections). Journalism being a big part of my life to understand the world around me and what happens, the readings really helped me when it comes to evaluating the need for both traditional and digital journalism within my daily life. 

What’s good about digital journalism is how accessible it is. You can receive your daily dose of news anywhere and everywhere, but a big problem that accompanies it is that we live in a dangerous time where narratives and sources of news can be fabricated or weaponized for one side or the other. This creates a lack of nuance within discussions, but also causes digital literacy issues because of such biases and around certain ages as people who are elderly tend to stick with their ways.

Now traditional journalism has the perk of being physical media so once it’s out, it is out. The internet may be forever, however news being so digitized article editing or deleting which causes issues if controversy happens and where it originated is nowhere to be found. With trad journalism usually being in print, there’s at least proof that undoctored copies do exist and that the journalists could still be held accountable if the action is not corrected. The issue with trad journalism however is while the market dies, future journalists aren’t taught that form of journalism and has a high chance of being lost due to it and the media will never be the same even moment to moment. 

I think how this directly affects me is how my consumption of journalism has not been as broadly expansive as I once thought it was. We need to understand how both build the landscape of how we receive our news.