Shift in Journalism
Journalism has gone through many changes throughout the
years. It first began with pure
reporting of facts because there were many people who could not watch or listen
to the game. The journalists had to
explain what happened at the games so people would know the facts of the
game. Once radio and television came
out, journalists went from the facts to more of an analysis of the game. There was no longer a need for the facts
because most people could listen to or watch the game so more of an analysis was
needed. During these days, journalists
became friends with the players. They had
a special relationship with the players which made it difficult for the
journalists to post bad or false information about the players in magazines, newspapers,
or on television. There has been a major
shift in journalism since the days of players and journalists being friends and
only reporting about the sport and not the player’s outside lives. I believe that the audience, the players, and
the media are all responsible in different ways for the shift in journalism.
First, the audience definitely has an influence over what
the journalists write about. Many of the
people in America are obsessed with the new fad of reality television. Reality television allows people to watch the
lives of famous and sometimes not famous people, but people really get to see
the intimate details, the ups and downs, and the secrets of people’s lives. Journalists see that this is what interests
the audiences these days so they proceed to find the secrets of players and the
history that the players might have wanted to keep secret and write about it.
Second the players also play a role in the shift of
journalism. Almost every famous sports
player has some form of social network site that they update frequently. No longer are the players just heard after
games or in interviews. Almost
everything the player thinks is tweeted or posted on a blog somewhere. This allows the media to intimate details of
the players lives directly through the players.
And lastly the media has had an impact on the way
journalists report information. The
media no longer cares about the specifics or the correctness of what they are
saying. This idea of commodification is
very apparent in the media. There are
many media outlets for people to get information from so we have choices as to
which magazines to buy, newspapers to read, or channels to watch. This creates pressure for the media companies
to compete and make a bigger profit than their competitors. Therefore if they are competing to beat other
companies, the media are going to report on the juiciest and most shocking
stories to get the reader’s. I mean are
you going to read about the exact physics of Tiger Woods putting techniques or
do most readers want to know exactly who, what, where, and why Tiger Woods affair
went down?
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