There is no doubt that technology has changed all our lives. Every year, modern technologies come out that change the way we interact with the world. But how do technological changes affect the tasks, duties, and assignments of communications professionals? This blog post will specifically look at the effects of technology on journalism professionals.
One of the biggest impacts technologies have had on the journalism profession is a direct impact on job stability, declining wages, and stress. This development has caused a need for journalists to find new and innovative ways of connecting with the public while creating news pieces people want to read or watch (Lareau, 2022).
Media convergence was a direct result of the digital revolution (Lareau, 2022). Media companies realized they could cross promote through television, newspapers, and only venues. This desire to converge media led to conglomerates purchasing multiple properties across all platforms. This led to a need for journalists to create content for various platforms while also leading to cutbacks and layoffs. This has also led to only a few major companies purchasing all their competitors to create mega news outlets (Lareau, 2022). This has had a significant impact on how journalists complete their work.
Journalists used to be able to follow a hunch or spend time developing stories through research and interviews. This allowed them to fully develop a story before bringing it to the public while backing their stories with facts and evidence. Today, the need for speed outweighs the need for truth and accuracy (Orihuela, 2019). But due to the rise of citizen reporters, public citizens with no professional training who are writing news stories and blogs, people believe there is a lot of news available even though that news is repeats of already published news stories or pieces based on the opinion of the author (Lareau, 2022).
These changes have made it imperative that journalists change the way they work. They must be faster than others and get the news out quickly. Many journalists are now responsible for creating content for print news as well as digital media while also shooting their own photos of videos and editing that content. This has created a need for journalists to receive extra training to know how to do this work properly. However, many universities and journalism schools are falling short in this area (Orihuela, 2019). It will remain to be seen how journalism training develops over time to offer the support and training needed for journalists in our quickly changing technological world.
References
Lareau, L. (2022). The impact of digital technology on media workers: Life has completely changed. Ephemera Journal, 22(2). Retrieved November 18, 2022, from http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/impact-digital-technology-media-workers-life-has-completely-changed.
Orihuela, J. L. (2022, November 14). The digital transformation of Journalism. Medium. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://jlori.medium.com/the-digital-transformation-of-journalism-1748c38df2bc
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