If this entire course had to be condensed into a short, snappy lead, it would read like this: “The landscape of journalism is rapidly changing in the world of web 2.0” In fact, my entire career as an undergrad studying journalism could be summed up that way. With the following pessimistic sub-head: “Journalism is a dying art.”
I would say it differently. “Journalism is a changing art.” As Jim Brady expressed in a very well-written blog post, “The rise of social networking has also created one major advantage for media companies that isn’t much discussed: the fact that news consumption has now become seamlessly blended into the daily lives of so many consumers.” In the past, engaging in the news wasn’t exactly all that, well, engaging. People sat down at the breakfast table with their newspapers, spent 20 minutes with it, and then went on with their lives. Maybe they would get to work and mention something interesting they read that morning, but the discourse was very limited.
Today, people can either spend the same dedicated time to a news article online, or they can simply be checking their Facebook and see a link posted by one of their friends on their news feed. The option to literally engage with the news by sharing it with others or by writing a comment in response, offers opportunities that journalism as a whole needs to embrace and get excited about.
This sharing and engaging is made possible by Web 2.0, which can be defined as the world wide web being used interactively. Information sharing, social networking sites, wikis, blogs, and video sharing sites are all examples of what web 2.0 is. Web 2.0 isn’t that different than web 1.0, because the technologies aren’t that different. In fact, World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee created it with these interactive values in the first place. (Laningham, Scott. “DeveloperWorks Interviews: Tim Berners-Lee.” 9/22/06.http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206txt.html)
Web 1.0 morphed into web 2.0 gradually, and while there were predictions thrown around about what it would mean culturally, no one could do more than wait and see. This included the journalism community, which before web 2.0 was less participatory and more passive. Papers offered a Letters to the Editor section, and their online counterparts allowed comments to be posted at the end of articles, but neither of those really offered the possibility for a conversation. And readers were slow to get a response, if any, from journalists.
Now that web 2.0 is in full force, journalism has had to go through an overhaul of its own. Now instead of passively reading the news, people can do so actively. Newspaper companies have Facebook pages where they post their stories of the day as instant publication. Magazines have bloggers who fill in the desire for new material between issues. And people can communicate, share opinions, ask questions, and offer even more information – with others as well as with the journalists themselves. Web 2.0 has created Journalism 2.0, and it has made the press for the people and by the people more than ever before.
-Erin Bartynski
