Journalism in the Digital Age

[TheBigA]

Yesterday, Goat Rodeo Cowboy brought up the Bill Moyers Journal on the HBO series The Wire.

Today, I read a great story in the New York Time:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/education/edlife/journ-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

It deals with how journalism schools are changing in the light of newspapers shutting down.

A similar article could be written about colleges with Radio-TV programs.

 

[gr8oldies]

Sounds like Mr. Moyers wants a return to old-school liberal journalism. Who is going to be in charge of deciding what is "real journalism" and what is not?

 

[TheBigA]

The public.

 

[gr8oldies]

The public.

That is true, but I'm thinking Mr.Moyers wants another "authority" to decide that, after all the public is too stupid to know what they "need".

 

[TheBigA]

That's why Moyers' day is over. Fred Friendly & Ed Murrow are dead.

 

[justula]

I've dealt with several digital forms of things (newspapers, radio, recordings, etc.) I've done that since before I was of legal age, after I was of legal age.

I loved that parts about young people not wanting to know about "old farts." One thing I love about the Internet is you have no idea how old I am. I could be that 17 year old genius who skipped 7 grades, I could be that 71 year old who's discovered his prime.

It's always interesting as to whether the new technology will really deliver because the content itself is good. Or is everybody just latching onto something because of the hype.

What I love about the whole blogging discussion is sometimes the blogosphere looks like it's 71,000,000 monkeys on typewriters, where eventually 1 publishes a worthwhile composition. Meanwhile, how many people had to wait for an "agency" like a paper or magazine of high standing to declare them worth publishing? Did they need the blessing of the authorities or were they always good?

The interesting thing about the digital age (radio, music, etc.) is anybody can publish anything. The bad thing is like some of us creatives know, you toss a lot of crud before you get to something worth keeping.