Journalism Education Conference

After reading the journalist panel's arguments, I agree that social media is having a great effect on my generation's way of gathering news, but they will never replace newswire journalism. Citizen journalists and word of mouth are very helpful sources for story ideas, but journalists cannot rely on the public to do a thorough job of reporting. Bloggers will not be reprimanded if their information is false or if they don't update regularly.
I also agreed that while news specialization has some benefits, its better to have journalists who can relate to a broad range of topics and can "connect the dots" for the average reader. People are naturally drawn to topics based on their experiences, so editors can rely on someone who is very politically active to cover local government, while someone who enjoys reading about medical findings can write the health beat, etc. Journalists who are trained in a variety of skills and who are informed about lots of topics are more valuable than a specialized journalist because they can tackle anything pops up in the newsroom.
Charlies Beckett said one major problem is the vast amount of duplicated work that journalists are encouraged to produce that is "formulaic, irrelevant and can be found elsewhere." I agree that with the Internet, there are too many other sources of information that the public goes to before reading the paper. I love that search engines offers the "news" filter for searches, but most times Wikipedia is the top source for information, instead of news sites. Journalists need to figure out a way to make their credible stories appear higher on search engine results (using Search Engine Optimization is one way to do this).
I don't agree with John Nichols claims that the Internet is just another platform for media, and that there is no difference between free and pay journalism. Advertising will sustain journalism, just like it sustained newspapers and broadcasts in the past and is sustaining Facebook now.I do agree that information cannot be caged, which is why we are having the problem's we're having today. There is no way to stop unchecked information from spreading online. People will believe anything, and young people are questioning information presented to them less and less. I hope that his claim that paid journalists will not exist in eight years is wrong, as well. Journalism as we recognize it today may disappear, but the public won't let it completely disappear. Someone will be a journalist for a living in the future. If journalists disappear, who is going to tell them what happened in their city (state, country, the world) today?