Figure 1: Musty Stacked Newspapers. Reprinted from flickr.com, by
As a journalism student at the University of Florida, I
am already invested in anything described as a crisis in my chosen major. While it sounds like a journalism crisis may
push people away from the field, part of putting research out there about this topic
was to draw people into the issue and field.
This article was less about scaring people already involved in
journalism away from newspapers and more about lighting a fire under the people
who do not care and should. In order to
get people to care about this issue, Williams talks about it with a political
and political economy approach. Politics
is something every day people are more likely to be involved in or care about so
relating the journalism crisis back to it was a smart choice for Williams. His main argument as it relates to politics
and the journalism crisis is that with less information and news being spread
out into the world, democracy is somewhat compromised. The media exists to help check the government
and if there is not enough funding to have people thoroughly investigate each
member of the government or each decision it makes then a disservice is being done
to the people of America.
Beyond the political approach, people should care about
the journalism crisis because it affects the entire ecosystem of information. Without journalists describing and translating
things into terms that everyone can understand, there is a stronger disconnect
between the elite educated and the every day hard workers. This gap in knowledge can be detrimental not
only in political terms but in societal terms because journalism and reading the
news is a form of education. Williams
does offer a solution to decrease this gap, however. He proposes that more peer reviewed research
or studies done at institutions be made available to the public. Most higher-level research requires a
subscription or access to a server that most people don’t have privilege to. By sharing information publicly that involves
numbers and statistics, researchers would be helping make up for the journalism
crisis that is happening. Williams also discusses
in his paper that allowing research like his to be made public is what will get
people to start caring about the journalism crisis and hopefully start a better
cycle of caring and reporting rather than not caring and a lack of
information.
The other aspect of the journalism crisis that Williams
discusses is the relationship between newspaper reporters and PR specialists. While PR specialist have always made more than
reporters, the gap in wages is steadily increasing. This is problematic because it means one is
much more valued over the other and it is not the one that is useful to the
most people. In 2004, reporters made 71
cents for every PR specialist’s dollar.
In 2013, reporters made 65 cents for every PR specialist’s dollar. This comparison gives light to another aspect
of the journalism crisis: it involves real people and their livelihoods. Most people would feel this issue is
important because of the way if affects them, which it does. It affects every person negatively because of
the lack of information flow but more so it affects the actual reporters
negatively. It is easy to look at the
big idea of the media or even newspaper reporters and just see an information
home and something that can write overwhelmingly bad news. However, each reporter is a person, with a
family and needs to make a living. By
humanizing the issue, hopefully it helps people to understand that this job and
this crisis are much too important to just brush by.
In conclusion, Williams has many points that he argues
about the journalism crisis in the article.
the most important line of thought is that the journalism crisis creates
a lack of information flow from the people at the top to ordinary, every day
people. Building off of that, the next
most important discussion was that people should care about this issue way more
than they already do, which is very little.
Most people don’t even know what’s happening or if they do they
understand very little of what is considered the journalism crisis. For this reason, it is important to make
research and explanations of the journalism crisis made publicly available to
people. This issue is a human one and it
questions the preservation of democracy, which means it is an issue that everyone
should care about. Everyone should be
doing their part to spread the word about this issue, or at the very least
understanding what actually happens in newspaper journalism.
Madison Black is a second-year journalism major at the University of Florida. Currently she is unsure of what exactly she wants to do with her life but she hopes it involves journalism or publishing. Madison enjoys spending time with friends and watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Madison Black is a second-year journalism major at the University of Florida. Currently she is unsure of what exactly she wants to do with her life but she hopes it involves journalism or publishing. Madison enjoys spending time with friends and watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
References
Williams, A.T. (2017). Measuring the Journalism
Crisis: Developing New Approaches That Help the
Public Connect to the Issue.
International Journal of Communication (19328036), 11,
4731–4743. Retrieved
from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid&db=ufh&AN=126813157&site=eds-live
Ranasinghe, B. (2010). Stacked Newspapers [Online image]. Retrieved April 14, 2019 from www.flickr.com
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ReplyDeleteFor the third article, "Madison Black draft" the writer did a good job of introducing the topic and establishing its importance. I like that they were able to say why it was important to them, saying " As a journalism student at the University of Florida, I am already invested in anything described as a crisis in my chosen major." This shows there interest and allows the reader to depend on the writer without much worry when it comes to providing solid information on that subject. I also like how you address what people may think and then counter it with what is really going on. My only critique would be to make the reader more involved by telling them how they can be effected on a lager level or play with their emotions by letting them know that if they don’t help make a change people will hurt or suffer.
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