Conflicted Views

I am a journalism minor at my local college, but my real passion is medicine, so I am also on the premed track. I chose journalism as my minor because I do like to write and journalist in my eyes are like investigators, and in some way so are physicians. Going into journalism however has allowed me to fully understand how scarce journalism is becoming. With the internet allowing its users to “google” things with tons of results loading within seconds, many people of all ages have become spoiled.

I’m also a millennial (we’re not all bad), and I grew up during technology development. It all happened so fast. I remember having dial-up internet and floppy disks and flip phones. Back when texting and internet was extra, and you asked your friends to call back after 9 PM when your minutes were free. I also remember learning how to use an encyclopedia in school. Then T-Mobile came out with the sidekick which had instant messenger installed already and a full keyboard and then there was google. And how cool, I can connect with my friends on Myspace (yes, back when Facebook was only for college students).

Now Facebook is so important to me and I couldn’t see my life without it. My iPhone tracks my daily use on Facebook and Facebook Messenger to be almost 3 hours.

I also remember when getting the Sunday newspaper was a big deal. My mom would send me to the corner store early before church to pick it up before they ran out. And somewhere between the 90’s and now, that faded, and no one thought twice about it. Only to find out, there have been people thinking about it every day. Journalists whose one passion is to provide the world with factual and reliable information. When I used to think about journalism, I would imagine this person who would put their life on the line and spend hours and days, even months, just to get to the bottom of a story. The internet has killed that passion. Journalist feel pressured to release a story in the timeliest of fashions now just to keep up with technology. Trying to reach and appeal to an audience that is more concerned with fast news than accurate and detailed news. In class we’ve learned about nut Graf’s and inverted pyramids, all with one thing in mind, how can you grab a reader’s attention and keep it?

The real issue is the audience now has so much accessible at the tip of their fingers that they aren’t holding journalists up to the same standard. When an article is shared on Facebook, many readers aren’t checking the date of the article, if the publishing website is reliable or even if the information is factual. (I have on many occasions seen an article trending and it was written 5 years ago, and not even relevant anymore).

On the other hand, many can argue however that journalists need to stop complaining, get over it, and hop on board with the rest of the world. The only problem is, if we rewind back to that Sunday newspaper, recall it was a pretty hefty paper. It had the local supermarket circulars, the new ads for your local pharmacies, the weekly ad for your local furniture, toy and discount stores. Ads, ads and more ads. Now, all these places advertise online, and where would they prefer to advertise? Of course, on a platform that is dominating the globe, which brings us back around to Facebook.

According to statista.com, in the 3rd quarter of its fiscal year in 2019, Facebook had over 7 million advertisers on their website, and by their 4th quarter had made $21.08 billion in revenue, much coming from advertisers.

In her recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review, Emily Bell touches on the strain journalists have felt from the lost of their main source of revenue, advertisers. She speaks about how Facebook, along with Google have teamed up with a grantee, Report for America, and have pledged together to fund $400 million over the next 3 years to support journalism. Bell argues that this does nothing more than put a band-aid over the wound with out actually fixing it.

This post is entitled conflicted views because while I agree that journalism is struggling and something does need to be done, I also think we live in a world where it is easy to point the finger when something isn’t going how it should. I believe highly in what journalist do, especially those who have made it their life’s journey to inform the world. But I also believe that Facebook and Google get so much pressure put on them and even when they try to help, its still never enough. Like my mom always said growing up: “you give an inch, they want a mile.”