When I heard about the death of Michael Jackson, I read of it through Twitter, then through websites and blogs and finally, just for the heck of it, I turned on the television. It was more out of habit than trying to really see whether there are new developments and more as a compliment to the news that I have already known. Just imagine, the image of those prisoners doing dances which are associated to the King of Pop, I managed to catch it way before the 8 o'clock news on one of the premier network station in Malaysia. It shows how I finally changed my way of trying to catch news through the way that we have been thought to do. Read newspaper and turn on the tele.
Over the weekend, 2 articles try to analyse the issue of how journalism is a dying career. In that articles, the writers, who are journalists, wrote about how even newspaper have realised that they cannot filter news like they use to. I wrote yesterday about how the media themselves think that they need to embrace the supposedly new media. The bosses, which are mostly editors, have asked their reporters to humanised themselves by twitting, blogging and telling the news like it is. Journalists are now humans, not just a name, which is a kind of a signature and when you get to know one of them, you will relate them to the stories or articles that they have written. Not they themselves.
In Malaysia, changes in the government of the day has resulted in a few journalists, who some of them were promised higher positions, were fired in mid-term. They ran off to write their own blogs and became more powerful with these new voices. Some even say they were the ones who brought down the old government. They are their own editor. They were sued but their fellow journalists rallied and formed associations in order to let their voices be heard. When the leaders changed (not the government), they were called once again and are currently head television stations and even newspaper. As they realised the losing battle the old media is fighting against the new media, they asked (no, commanded) their reporters to have theior own blogs.
The question I am really asking is, has journalism is dead due to the advancement of new ways for you to access news like Twitter and such or is it dead due to bad quality of reporting?
I ask questions but there is this one site which discuss this real well. You can access it here. Let me know what you think the future of jounalism is.