Forgive me because I know this topic is a few weeks out dated, but I could not help but stumble across the first post of
Professor McDonald’s blog about Steve Jobs’ premature obituary. A few weeks ago, the Bloomberg financial newswire published a story stating that Jobs, the Apple CEO, had passed away. Although Job is ill with pancreatic cancer, he has not died.
I could not help but think back to the article that we read last week by Vin Crosbie. Only in a society where there is a growing need to be the first rather than the best would a newswire rush to publish someone’s death. In the second part of Crosbie’s article he discussed that since the creation of the Internet, there is a 24 hour stream of news. Rather than priding themselves on being the best, newspapers have to be the first. In my opinion, I think that this is an even stronger reason for the downfall of newspapers, rather than lack of variety in the material offered. I feel like every time I tell my friends that I am working for the Daily Illini or want to go into journalism, they ask me why I am bothering to try and get a degree in something that I could already be doing.
At least in younger generations, it seems that there has been a loss of trust in the press, and honestly, I sometimes think for good reason. After looking over the
Wired Blog Network’s article about the Steve Jobs situation, I got upset with myself for a second. For as long as I have been interested in journalism, I have always focused on content first. If I am a good enough writer, an editor should always be able to fix any grammatical errors easily, right? I should never have to worry about how or when stories are published, right? Well obviously those are both ridiculous ideas. If I had been the writer who wrote the obituary for Steve Jobs, my reputation would have been just as tarnished as the person who made the mistake in publishing the article. Even more importantly, if I know the grammar and master the language I am writing in, the content should all come together.
The
Steve Jobs incident has prepared me to take editing and grammar more seriously. I feel like I have put it off for as long as I have been studying journalism, and am finally ready to master it. Hopefully, the process will not be too painful.
2 comments:
I completely agree with you! I feel that newspapers and media focus less on accuracy and far more on having "breaking news." We need more people like you that are skeptical of what is being printed by such sources and to bring readers truthful content...even if it does begin with just a simple spelling and grammar check! :) Tell your friends there is a demand for people like you that care!
People want to be the first to know, so much so that there is a lot inaccuracy's out there. People have reason to be skeptical of us, to question the integrity of journalism because it has been severely compromised.
We can either continue on this path or we can change, but the way the business is going, blogs and opinion will be come the "news" of the future
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