NDM Story #10 - I'm with you on the digital revolution, it's the lack of journalism I can't face

I'm with you on the digital revolution, it's the lack of journalism I can't face

Summary:

A US newspaper called "The Citizen" closed their publication after 90 years of having run it and failing to sell it on to someone else. This was largely due to the competition of two other popular newspapers that were locally distributed such as Laconia Daily Sun. The article also features commentary from columnist Arlinghaus who is unhappy with the tendencies people have to claim that they receive their News from Twitter. He states that it's often the case that people actually link to a news page as opposed to sharing their own news on their twitter accounts. Therefore, in actuality, they have news distributed to them via Twitter but the source of the News itself is NOT Twitter. He also highlights that the same is the case during radio interviews since the interviewers typically quote news from newspapers without crediting the reporters who gather and initially distributed the news. Therefore, it's just recycled news as opposed to anything new or innovative, being produced. The writer of this article states that "Social media reacts to news, it doesn’t find it. And the fall in the numbers of news-gatherers is a genuine concern for our democracies."

My personal opinion:

I agree with this article because I do feel that generally, news is recycled without the initial reporter being credited for their hardwork. Therefore this definitely is probably one of he underlying problems with the decline in journalism and particularly newspaper journalism. I feel that these journalists may also feel unappreciated and therefore discouraged to produce any new content as a result of their work not being recognised or praised by the masses (whether their audience or by the institution they are working on behalf of). However, I do think made by that the claim made by Arlinghaus that "“No one gets their news from Twitter even the people who think they do.” is a little extreme because there are in fact, incidents where news has genuinely been posted first and foremost on social media. This newly occurring phenomenon has been done by professionals and citizen journalists alike as it allows production of news to be in a fast-paced manner, promoting the "breaking news" style more realistically. Therefore, it isn't true to say that no one gets their news from twitter because citizen journalism offers ways where people can make the news using social media sites. This fact also disproves the following comment: "Social media reacts to news, it doesn’t find it" because there have been cases where social media users HAVE, in actuality, found news and posted it themselves.