Journalism in a digital world

I'm usually a traditional kind-of girl. I don't mean I don't like change. I do. I just prefer writing and traditional editing to some of the new forms of media. But I've recently been enlightened.
 
Why, you ask?  Because every conversation I've had about the classes I'm taking this semester has gone something like this:

"How's summer going? You taking classes?"
"Yeah," I reply. "It's not too bad. I'm taking Advanced Editing."
"Editing," they say, rather surprised. "You mean like photo or video editing? Cool!"
"Um... no, like writing editing," I say, rather awkwardly.
"You mean words? Oh..." they respond, with a that-still-exists? look. 

No joke. It's happened about four or five times so far this summer. For a brief few minutes, I almost felt lame for writing and editing stories. But, I suppose what they say is true.  The digital world is taking over. No longer (as we all already know) can we get by with just writing and editing. We have to take videos, pictures and the whole lot of it.

So, I suppose I should jump on the bandwagon. I'm actually excited about getting on it.

The role of networked journalism and digital media is something most journalists are understanding and beginning to apply more often.  I think journalism is in an in-between stage, where we still do the writing and the editing, but we are increasing the time and content that goes toward multimedia reporting.

This can also be a difficult stage for colleges and journalism students. Figuring out what area you want to pursue in any field is difficult, but especially in journalism, a field with many different facets. Then, of course, many colleges are still increasing the number of multimedia-based classes offered. Luckily, the UF College of Journalism and Communications has a few.

New Media, however, is not simply photos, graphics and videos. Networked Journalism has become a very important key to communicating with readers. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are important places to network and communicate with others around the world.  Using Facebook and Twitter is something that can be done much easier than learning how to take great pictures and shoot awesome videos.

The below video sums up how rapidly journalism is changing. In the video, VOA's Philip Alexiou talks about how society is moving more to online news and how journalism is reacting:




The problem now (at least for me) is, as a student, how do I actually learn to use some of these tools? So, I went somewhere I can usually find help with situations like these: Poynter's News University.  Poynter has free courses available in a lot of different areas, including photojournalism and multimedia.

With society changing even quicker than journalism, I suppose every journalists should jump on the bandwagon, too.