The future of journalism

Now that you have covered almost every aspect of journalism there is to know, what is the future of journalism and what should we expect to see in the coming years?

As technology has evolved, journalism has kept up and evolved with it. Before the days of television, print media was the only source of reliable news and was extremely popular. After the invention of TV and radio, journalism went from strictly print publications to incorporating moving images with the stories to make it more appealing for the viewer.

This is probably something that took journalists a while to adjust with but they eventually did. As television news media took over the news world, it became more apparent that while print journalism is still relevant, technology is slowly taking that over. Not to worry, because journalists are evolving with these times.

Now you can see the news everywhere. On TV, on social media, on billboards, blogs, and basically everywhere you look. Moving forward, there is another aspect of journalism that is a fairly new concept and is still in the works.

Virtual reality journalism may be the new way of getting the viewer interested in your story. It’s simple: Put yourself in the middle of all the action with a 360 view camera. Document everything that is happening, the good and the bad, and formulate that into an interactive experience for the consumer.

The goal of the news is to show people what is really going on in the world to hopefully provoke change or new ways of thinking. When looking at VR and how far it’s come, it only makes sense for journalists to take the next leap of faith and move into the virtual world of news. If you are interested in learning more about VR journalism, you’re in luck, because that also happens to be my tech expertise!

Thanks for reading along with my blog and I hope you learned something valuable with me!

 

Ethics of journalism

Guidelines that a journalist should follow to remain ethical in their work:

• Seek truth and report it
  • This is something that we’ve already covered.
• Be truthful and give credit where it’s due
  • have respect for the truth and for the right of the public to know that truth
  • never plagiarize
  • Don’t fabricate stories
  • Don’t distort photos without clearly stating you have done so, or staged it
  • strive for the truth even if it takes a while to find it
• Respect human rights
  • Anonymous sources are generally not used, but there are certain cases in which the identity of the source needs to be protected, then in some cases it’s okay.
  • If a source asks for a part of their interview to go “off the record” you are usually to respect their wishes.
  • Respect the privacy of people dealing with tragedy, domestic assault. Avoid providing sensitive information like the address of a lottery winner or something of that nature
• Objectivity
  • We’ve discussed this aspect
• Accept responsibility
  • If you realized you’ve made a mistake, own it and don’t try to pretend like it didn’t happen. Because eventually someone will recognize this mistake and you will have to be held accountable for this.
  • Invite the public to ask questions about everything that you are doing and why. Also known as transparency which we’ve covered.

These basic rules of ethics are not only limited to print journalists, but television journalists, social media, blogs, magazines and other forms of digital media. The ethics of certain things are not always clear as day, so you need to be able to decipher what you think is ethical and what isn’t because someone will always have an opinion outside of your own.

Remaining objective

Journalists have a duty to present the facts and only the facts regardless what their political or social views are. That means if a liberal journalist were to write something about a Republican candidate running for office, they would have to completely put their biases aside.

Being a journalist, you have a certain level of influence on your readers and if you are writing stories that slant a certain way, you’re writing for your own self-interest and you’re not being honest.

The idea of a journalist purposely slanting a story to fit their own political agenda goes against all basic ethical codes of journalism. If someone does this, they are spreading propaganda and lies which automatically can discredit someones journalistic career.

Being able to take both sides of a story and set your own bias aside is going to be a crucial aspect of being a journalist and something you will face almost every day in the field.

Naturally, people will always have a certain opinion or stance on something, it’s just in our human nature. Being able to look at your own stances and biases and leave them at your house before you walk into the newsroom will make or break you as an honest and trust worthy opponent.

That’s why it is always important to get both sides of the story and let the reader decide how they think and feel about what they just read with absolutely no bias or persuasion being in the mix.

Remaining transparent

As a journalist, our motives are questioned by the public everyday whether it’s about a graphic photo that was shown or a story about a young child who was brutally murdered. It’s easy for people in the public to say journalists are only out to get viewers and ratings which is why we show photos and publish stories like that.

The truth is, a journalist has a duty to keep the public informed and when something awful like a brutal murder or a car accident occurs, we must inform the public because it is their right to know what is happening right in their own backyard. If they weren’t informed of things like this, how would they know to be aware of the sexual predator who is living in their neighborhood or the guy who just got out of prison for burglary and attempted murder.

We as journalists need to tell the public why we choose to write the stories we write and show the photos we write. If we don’t put our reasoning behind it, then we aren’t being completely transparent, which is key in a newsroom.

If an angry member of the public stormed into a newsroom demanding why we published a story about their son who killed someone drunk driving, we should have a very good and obvious reason behind that because if we can’t, then we look pretty stupid and sensationalist as well.

Being able to remain completely transparent allows the public to have a greater trust in the media and attempts to restore a trust between the media and public that is on the fringe.

Everyday the media’s motives are questioned by the public but there is always a reason why they are seeing that story or photo.

Documenting your interview

When documenting an interview, a reporter has the option to take hand-written notes or use a tape recorder to capture the whole interview. There are different pros and cons to each method that boil down to preference for every reporter.

Note taking during an interview

• Pro
  • Can write down key words that are specifically important information to go back to
  • Can write follow-up questions to prompt discussion
  • While taking notes, creates an empty silence that encourages interviewee to talk more to fill that emptiness and thus forth may leak good information.
• Con
  • Can miss key information if source is talking too fast
  • Can lose train of thought while taking said notes and interrupt interview
  • Go back to notes with possibility of not being able to read some things that you write
  • Can only get partial quotes instead of full, lengthy juicy quotes that people love
  • Doesn’t get full embodiment of story
  • Possibility of misquoting someone

Using a tape recorder

• Pro
  • Doesn’t miss a single bit of information
  • Allows reporter to stay engaged and think of follow-up questions
  • Full quotes that leave no possibility of misquoting  a source
  • Gets every aspect of story and not just the key ingredients
  • Allows for the conversation to feel less rushed by trying to get all the information
  • Fits in your back pocket and you can take it anywhere and record at any time.
• Con
  • Has a possibility of being deleted
  • Can record but not pick up any audio
  • You have to go back and listen to all of it and transcribe every word which will be very time consuming
  • Can lead to being buried in your own information
  • Can add more time to your turn-around than originally planned

So by taking all of this into consideration, it really comes down to the preference of the reporter and what inconveniences they want to deal with when getting information for a story.

If they want to run the risk of missing information because they were too busy writing, that’s their own problem. If they want to record it and run the risk of getting no audio, that’s their problem. There is no right or wrong for this answer as everyone is different.

 

Interviewing a source

There are different ways in which a reporter can talk to their source:

• In person
  • This is the most effective way for a reporter to interview a source. It is more of a personal interaction which could result in getting better stories and better quotes. When a journalist meets a source in person, they are doing better networking for themselves while also being able to get a good feel of that person and if they are in fact a trust worthy source. It is always important to read body language when interviewing a source in person. Keep it conversational and friendly, you don’t want to come off as a robot.
• Over the phone
  • This is the second resort to interviewing a source who maybe is a busy person and can only do phone interview or isn’t close enough in location. Even though you are speaking to them on the phone, you can still pay attention to the tone of your interviewees voice and get a feel for them. This isn’t generally encouraged but is widely used in newsrooms across country. If you go into the field of journalism, you will see that this is a commonly used practice.
• Email interview
  •  Some may consider this lazy journalism, but only if the journalist initiated a email interview. If the source is highly busy and can’t talk and that’s their only means of transportation, then a reporter will have no choice but to roll with that. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s definitely not a good thing for a reporter who wants to become better at interviewing and writing in general.
• Taking quotes from a press release
  • This is the bottom of the barrel for a reporter. This isn’t necessarily a means of interviewing your sources, but a reporter in some cases may take a powerful or informative quote from a press release. The reason a reporter may do this is because they are on deadline and can’t get through to a final source. It also could happen because it was a really powerful quote that should be shown to the public. But normally, pulling a quote from a press release isn’t preferred and can be frowned upon.

You always want to consider the five W’s of journalism when interviewing your source. You should also make sure you are well prepared with questions that you feel the readers would want to know. It take’s some time a preparation to make sure that you’ve covered all of the bases.

Editing your own stories

By now you should have a basic understanding of how a sentence is structured. Being able to write your story and have an extra three sets of eyes look at it before it publishes it great, but self-editing is important if you want to be a successful journalist.

The AP Stylebook is the journalistic bible. You will find everything you need to know in the AP Stylebook so if you decide to become a journalist, you will surely have one by your side whenever you write.

When your re-reading your work, make sure that you read it multiple times. It’s also important to take a mental break when editing your own work because it’s easy to overlook some of the most minor mistakes.

Take your time when reading your story. Don’t edit as you go because it makes room for adding in unnecessary errors or even missing them entirely.

• Read the story
• Read it again
• Edit it
• Re-read the story

That should be a basic guideline for anyone who is editing their own work or someone else’s work. Be thorough because every misplaced comma and every grammatical error can get under the skin of a busy editor who doesn’t want to see such obvious mistakes.

Sometimes it’s even good to write first and second drafts before your finished product. I know in the everyday news world there isn’t always time to write many drafts before the final submission. But in the case of a feature writer or someone working on a huge story, it may actually be helpful to start off with a draft, re-read it and then write a new story if necessary.

The Watchdog

I’ve mentioned this term “watchdog” a couple times before, but haven’t really delved into the whole idea of it yet. As a journalist, you are obligated to keep an eye on those who have power that influences the publics lives as well as your own. You are the voice of those who cannot speak for themselves.

People often confuse the true objective of the watchdog. Some may say journalists are just looking to ruin peoples lives. But the fact of the matter is, when we ruin someones life it’s because they did something and got caught, we just reported on it.

Aside from being watchdogs of the government, journalists also have an obligation and a responsibility to document everything that is wrong with society and really bring light to that to in-turn one day make a difference in someones life or the world.

Lastly, we as reporters are supposed to report on both the good and the bad, not just pick a side. If we as journalists only wrote about the bad all the time, we would be portraying a false picture with our narrative. Sure, the world is going crazy, but surprisingly there is still some good left in that world and journalists have a job to make that known and keep the faith strong in people.

There’s no better feeling than closing your eyes at night knowing that what you do with your words and participation can change someone’s life and change the world.

 

How should reporters compose themselves?

As a reporter you are expected to act in a way where you are representing your newspaper, yourself and the public. You should be as professional as possible on and off the clock as you are considered to be somewhat of a public figure.

In other words, it means to avoid getting wrapped up in your own self interests, don’t sleep with your sources, don’t become too friendly with sources, etc. to maintain a good perception. Perception is huge as a reporter because as mentioned before, you are a public figure as a journalist. Your name appears in their newspaper everyday. If they see you acting in a crude manner or participating in questionable behavior, you could potentially hinder your credibility and your employers reputation.

Being the “watchdogs” we must always be aware that what we do matters as journalists. Reporters should always remember the five principles of journalism:

• Truth and accuracy
  • A journalist must always keep “truth” in mind when getting a story. It is extremely important to make sure your “facts” are always factual.  It is easy to get misinformation from a source, but that is why it’s important to make sure you are talking to the right people and trust your gut. Double and triple check and check again.
• Independence
  • Journalists are considered to be “independent voices.” Meaning we must never act formally or informally involving any special interests like political office, political campaigns, special interest clubs or anything that can be a conflict of interest between the reporter and a story. In most cases it’s a code of Ethics.
• Non-bias storytelling
  • It is important as a journalist to get both sides of the story as to not seem bias to one side. It’s no secret that we as humans have a tendency to be bias about things, but journalists have to keep that out of their work or they won’t be very good at their jobs. Stories should always be balanced with plenty of context.
• Compassion
  • Being conscientious that sometimes the things that we report are not always going to sit well with the public. It’s our job to make important things like war  known and we can’t always hide the truth as to not offend anyone. But it is also important to remember that when we speak to families of victims or victims or anyone involved in tragedy to be human. In most cases they will at least say something to you if you show compassion and empathy.
• Accountability
  • Finally, a professional and respectable journalist will always be accountable for their actions and the mistakes they make if any. We must make it known to the public that we have in fact spread information and will fix whatever it is that needs to be fixed. People aren’t always going to agree with what you have to say but as a reporter and a news organization you have to remain completely transparent.

 

Different types of news stories

Although there is a basic format that is presented when writing a basic news story, there are different kinds of  stories that will follow a slightly different format. Just as a refreshment, the last blog entry discussed the basics of how to write a hard news story:

• The 5 W’s
• Inverted pyramid
• At least 3 sources. In rare cases, 2
• Good lead
• Nut graph
• Reliable sources
• Non bias- both sides of the story

Another aspect of journalism is called feature writing. Feature stories are different from hard news because they are more in-depth about their subject. You’ll find that a good writer’s feature story will read almost like a novel or a short story. It’s not supposed to feel like a news story for the reader.

Feature stories allow the writer to let their creative juices flow with detailed description and scene-setting anecdotes. An anecdote is a lead that usually starts like a short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident.

For example, I recently wrote a feature story about Ellis Music in Bethel, VT and used an anecdotal lead. Everyone in the news room (Rutland Herald) loved the story and it also made it on the cover of the Rutland Reader. Here’s how it started:

     The man remembers standing as a young boy in a crowd of people in a dimly lit music hall, patiently awaiting the main event. A familiar face appeared on stage and the room erupted in applause.

     A spotlight illuminated the man on stage and everything went silent. Then the man in the spotlight began to play and the boy’s eyes glimmered as the music coursed through his body and into his soul. 

     That boy in the crowd was David Ellis, president of Ellis Music Co. in Bethel. The man on stage was his father. That was the moment David Ellis knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life.

That’s an example of an anecdotal lead an a good example of how a good feature story should start. Feature stories also have a lot more art and much more of a visual affect to draw the reader in when compared to traditional hard news.

Finally, there are editorials. Editorials are interesting because it takes the basic rule of journalism; never put your opinion in the story, and tosses it right out the window.

Editorials are all opinion based. The idea is to take a current event, and I say that very vaguely because it can really be anything, and then you write about your feelings of that current event. It could be anything from reflecting on the 9/11 terrorist attacks to talking about the current presidential administration and beyond. Editorials don’t need any sources like hard news or features, but they have to be factual. This is because editorials are also the voice of the paper so they can’t be based off misinformation.