Final Blog – The Future of Digital Journalism
Modern journalism will inevitably make the complete transition to online exclusively. The traditional ways of print journalism will by my prediction, be obsolete by 2035. I also believe that the rise of influencers will continue to rise for about ten years, and then eventually plateau out after our generation no longer has time or interest to invest in influencers the way we do now. And as influencers begin to decline, I believe another generation of an influencer “hybrid” will emerge as the next generation begins to dominate the journalism demographic.
There are a multitude of reasons I believe the future of digital journalism is going to be a positive one. One big reason is actually a negative one, and that is modern technology addiction. A course I took along with Com 360, was Com 388, the study of social media and the varying effects on the human population. In this course, we extensively researched how modern technology addiction is affecting the youth of America, and although this is a negative consequence in the grand scheme of the health of the general public, it will also very positively affect the amount of digital journalism is engaged with if the number of hours consumed daily on a phone continues to rise. Because of this technology stimulus, the millennial generation, and even prior generations are reverting more to digital journalism as opposed to traditional journalism. Something else was stressed when researching the effects of continued technology addiction, the rise of short, sweet information as opposed to traditionally structed articles like you would see in a newspaper. And because short spirts of information are becoming increasingly popular, that means the value of the newspaper is, in turn, going down.
Another big reason that digital journalism will continue to rise is the simultaneous rise of social media and the platforms that journalists have to promote their own work, or their organizations work. Journalists have taken to social media, mainly Twitter, to express their opinions about topics, self-promote their content and interact with consumers. Because people are always on social media anyways, the move to “social media journalism” has become very popular and could even say it is the new “norm”.
The transition from traditional to digital could have some immediate backlash, however. Because residents of communities’ value local news to a great amount, they may want to keep traditional style news and dispute modern advances. This is one potential drawback for digital journalism, but I believe this will be an immediate problem at most.
Another factor that will contribute to the rise of digital journalism is the current pandemic we are all experiencing. Because journalists are limited in what they can do out in the real world, they are relying almost exclusively to produce digital news if they were not before the pandemic began. This has also led many journalists to resort to solutions journalism. Solutions journalism is an interesting take during this time too. I believe that solutions journalism is a viable option in the modern age of journalism. Even if you provide backed research with a thorough analysis, not everyone will agree with you even after all of the preverbal “facts”. On the flip possibility, it could resolve a lot of conflict within a community if everyone who is a part of it is a logical thinker who doesn’t get too wrapped up in their own social opinions and is able to adapt when new information is presented. I do not think that solutions journalism will be a solution to the issues of influencers for example. Whether influencers are viewed as an issue or not, that’s up for interpretation. But I do believe that during this time, solutions journalism will be a positive thing for the transition to strictly digital journalism. Going along with the pandemic, we have the issue of free and paid news. Some think that news content should be temporarily free during this worldwide pandemic, and some believe that to stimulate the economy, it should remain paid. In my opinion, I believe the coverage of the pandemic should be free to the public, because it is a unique circumstance in which the general public needs to be informed to not only stay safe, but prevent this issue from getting worse, and if the coverage is free, then there is no excuse. And as for the options for big news organizations, it is clear they should either down-charge or make content free. If news organizations began to up-charge for news relating to the worldwide pandemic, they would receive an unbelievable amount of bad press, and receive terrible backlash when the pandemic is eventually over.
The future for digital journalism is just that, the future. I believe that within 15 years digital journalism will be the largest, or only, news market in America, with large popularity worldwide as well. And as the millennial generation begins to age more, there will be a new wave of a “hybrid” influencer that will appeal more to the newer, younger generation the same way influencers appeal to us now.
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