Week 11: Abstracts
This week I decided to do a little something different. I read Mark Glaser’s “The Working Journalist in the Age of the Internet,” Jakob Nielsen’s “Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design,” and Dan Gillmor’s “Journalism Isn’t Dying, It’s Reviving.”
I’m going to lump them all together because it’s getting to that time of year when my fellow classmates and I are looking for jobs and really trying to market ourselves in the ever changing world of journalism. In my Professional Practice class with Mike Foley, we often discuss the future of the industry. Newspapers are forced to make extreme budget cuts because investors want more and more in returns, but the money’s just not there. Are there really any jobs out there?
In order to make myself that much more aware, I took Communication on the Internet, a class that teaches about the beginnings of the Internet and how to write XHTML code. I really know nothing about computers and writing Web pages, but I know employers are looking for people who know what they’re doing. The University of Florida’s journalism program doesn’t require that a student takes online media courses, but I know it is planning to add more classes of that nature so that students can have the opportunity to really grasp the concept of online reporting.
I like how Mark Glaser goes through each element of the “old” and “new” way of approaching journalism. I’m nervous about having to work all the time and being addicted to my crackberry, but that’s the way the world is working now. Glaser says that journalism students should take advantage of the exciting possibilities out there on the Web. He talked about one student who asked his blog readers to help finance a trip to Iraq so he could report on exactly what they wanted to know. He ended up raising $15,000 and had such a reader-run site, it’s amazing.
Projects like that seem daunting to me. I’m trying to educate myself on Web design and writing specifically for the Web (Hence, why I read Nielson’s “Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design”). I’m trying to learn the fundamentals so that I have something to bring to the table when I finally do get a job.
And while the field of journalism seems like it’s coming to an end, Gillmor offers hope that it’s only becoming better. Hyperlocal journalism is truly catering to readers in small towns and specific niches. Citizen journalism is still working on investigative pieces with regular journalism, often funded by non-profit organizations. The world will continue to need news, it’s just the source of that news that’s changing. The Web is a wonderful innovation and it’s exciting to know that I will be a part of this historic change.
