The Future of Journalism Revisited

Engagement.
I was watching an interview with Arianna Huffington, who founded the Huffington post on the Lang and O'Leary Exchange on CBC Newsworld and this word kept coming up. She was talking about the future of journalism.

At the beginning of the year all of the Journalism Majors at Red River College this year were asked to blog about what they felt the future of journalism was. Watching this interview reminded me and caused me to want to take a look back at what some of us had written.

I missed the point a little, and now, having given the matter some further thought, I would like to expand on what I said.

I focused on how some believe the rise of the citizen journalist and free internet content spells the imminent end of the profession of journalism.

Now I feel like my answer is incomplete.

Arianna Huffington said on the program that she wasn't sure exactly what the 'platform' would be to deliver journalism in the future. She even suggested that there could be many platforms.

The one common denominator she felt was engagement. She feels that the days of the journalist providing the news from up on high are over. Now it's all about the interaction between the journalist and the reader.

I have a little bit of first hand experience with this. For the last seven years or so I have had an online correspondence with Dave Molinari, who covers the Pittsburgh Penguins for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

I have to admit that as a journalist and a student of communications that I struggle with the social media. In 2007 I reluctantly signed up for Facebook, and that was only because I had just moved to Korea and didn't know anyone in the country.

As a  journalist of the future I am going to have to do a lot more.

In terms of content this means being able to write, provide video, audio, and still pictures.

In terms of interaction, it means going on social web sites like Twitter, Facebook and others, not just
 to write, but also to read.

Often as a journalist we are warned not to read the comments in the comment section of an article that they have published. I now think this is wrong, and the last thing we should do.

We need to read what the readers are writing. This means the good and the bad.

Huffington also spoke about the comments section and how the Huffington Post pre-screens their comments and no longer allows anonymous comments.

I'm not sure if I agree with not allowing anonymous comments because in some ways I think that is the only free speech that still truly exists.