Journalism Revolution

This weeks readings were on the revolutionary changes in the field of journalism. I found all of the readings very interesting. Whenever I tell someone I am studying journalism they always seem to ask me which direction I am going to go with it, print or broadcast. That question has become outdated since online journalism became popular. I am never sure how to answer them because I am interested in both, can't journalists be both? With online journalism it is possible to do both. It is possible to tell a story with visuals, audio, and print.
The one reading talked about how some people just watch tv or read the news, but they are only getting either/or when doing so. People who REALLY want to be informed have been using the web for their news because it is more detailed. Instead of getting just the print version or just the broadcast version, they get both.
Another aspect of online journalism that is interesting is how the videos found on news websites are just similar to a short documentary.Many people do no watch documentaries, unless it is something big like the Micheal Moore ones. However, they are really informing, yet at the same time entertaining. Creating a video package for an online news source is similar to a documentary because it also has to be entertaining, or have some type of engaging aspect to it. It also does not have the time contraints of videos for tv. Thus, you are able to be a bit more experimental with it. Focus on a story of one person and then bring it out into a bigger picture, or infuse some slides or pictures, instead of just footage.
On that point, I liked the one reading about how people are becoming numb to mass destruction or mass suffering. It order to really engage a viewer into a video or picture you have to single out that one suffering person. The impact of one person's story is so much greater than that of an almost generic-like story of some type of destruction. The world has become numb to bad news, but hopefully they have not become so numb that they no longer feel compassion for a single human being.