A new kind of Journalism

In first year journalism classes last year the first, and main thing we learnt was writing for print. Sure we could've published those stories online, or on a news app. We learnt about blogging too, but generally we learnt how to write longer style news stories.

This year in the journalism major we're still learning that, but through other classes we're expanding our horizons.

In radio and broadcast journalism classes we're learning how to write for their prospective mediums.

At first I thought - Oh, Crap! I have no idea how to do this. I'm for sure doing this all wrong. But that's part of learning so I was okay with it.

I think radio has been the hardest for me. Though it's similar to writing for tv, with short, concise, easy to understand information - it's harder to do without any visuals.

I like the challenge of writing for radio but I've discovered that I love writing for TV.

Writing for TV is pretty hard because you are constantly having to think about what the viewer is going to get out of your story. Why do they care? I definitely made this mistake in the first couple weeks but I'm proud of my last story and hope I did it right!

The visuals definitely help, but add another challenge - to write to your video. But it's fun and I'm slowly falling in love with television writing. Next step...on air reporting!

The nice thing about CreComm is that they might throw you into something you don't know how to do, but then once you do it you know what you did wrong. I hope that most students are like me and

Anderson Who?

Two Fridays ago (September 2, 2011) I was at home, channel surfing when I finally decided to watch eTalk because there really wasn't anything else on. I was super excited when I clicked on the show and the screen changed to a nice close up of Anderson Cooper, one of my favorite journalists.

I didn't catch the whole interview, but when I tuned in what I heard amazed me. Ben Mulroney who was interviewing Cooper was asking him something along the lines of why or how he became a journalist. 

Cooper, who has a BA in political science from Yale became a journalist in a more drastic way then most of us. Compared to what he did, us CreCommers have it easy! During the interview Cooper told Mulroney that his friend made him a fake press pass and he started going to wars to cover them.

I knew that Cooper was an amazing journalist, doing amazing work with CNN - but I had never heard how he started before and I was amazed. I had gained a great respect for him and was impressed that eTalk was airing a more "newsy" story. That was until I watched the "highlight" video from the interview.

Here's the link: http://en.video.sympatico.ca/index.php/en/video/entertainment/3/all-entertainment-providers/153/etalk/729/cooper-countdown/1149933462001

It's just a promo interview for Cooper's new daytime television show, Anderson. The show is comparable to Oprah's talk show as they mentioned, with a large emphasis on celebrities lives and going into depth and finding out what their real stories are.

The show looks interesting but I'm not sure what to expect. I'm hoping and expecting a large emphasis on real journalism from Cooper, but this highlight reel doesn't give me that feeling. eTalk makes it seem like just another talk show and I'm a little worried because Cooper mentioned his guilty pleasure is "bad television" but I'm counting on him to impress me.

I PVR'ed the show, and am going to watch it later tonight - my thoughts on the new show to come. Hint, the first show features interviews with Amy Winehouse's friends and family, and is the first big interview they did after her death.

What is Journalism?

Journalism is described by the Oxford dictionary as "the activity or profession of writing for newspapers or magazines or of broadcasting news on radio or television."

That may have been accurate 25 years ago, but with today's modern technologies journalism has grown to be so much more.

The first point of news used to be radio - where you found out first. Radio newscasts happened throughout the day and short, detail free stories were announced there. Next, a longer version of what happened was presented on the television news. And finally, you'd get the full story with the next morning's newspaper article. Now, with social media and the internet, the full story happens a lot faster.

In my personal experience, I find out first on Twitter. By following all the news sources, and through word of mouth - news spreads fast on Twitter. For example, when Amy Winehouse died - I found out the news hours before any coverage was present on tv radio or print. The short 140 character description can tell it all or be accompanied by a link, which will take you to the news source's website where you can find either a shorter version of the story, or the later updated version.

The need for immediacy has taken over the world of news journalism. People want to know what happened and they want to know now. Because of outlets like Twitter, Facebook, websites and Apps, the job of journalists is changing.

Crime journalist for the Winnipeg Free Press, Mike McIntyre, said last year to a group of CreComm students that he now has to do twice as much work and twice as fast. He has to write a story right away for web, and another full story for the next day's print version of the paper.

Journalism is being changed by technology, and by what people want from their news. In Winnipeg for example, it seems as though crime rates are rocketing through the roof when they're actually going down. Why do we think they're getting higher? Because the sad reality is people want to know about crimes that are happening, so that's what the journalists in the city choose to cover over other stories.

Journalism is moving away from New York Times and magazine style long articles, and becoming more condensed. Consumers are getting more stories, with less information. So it's becoming a less is more kind of industry.