Trends of Journalism
In his show, Last Week Tonight, John Oliver explores the dying breed of print journalism, and the downfalls that come with an increasingly digital source of news. Without question, the rise of social media and technology is the driving force behind this change in news sources. As people become more accustomed to social media, they rely more heavily on the internet for their news. First off, it is much easier and cheaper to read up on the news with the technology we have at our fingertips. Secondly, as a product of this online behavior, people have shorter attention spans than they used to, causing them to “click” on more interesting stories that catch the eye, rather than the serious news that one may find more commonly in a newspaper.
There are several consequences that come with the declining market of print news. One serious problem that local newspapers have seen over the years have come when they are purchased by incredibly wealthy people. For example, as Oliver explains, one of the wealthiest men in Las Vegas purchased the Las Vegas Review Journal (Last Week Tonight). This may have seemed like a good thing at the time, as the journal was in safe hands from going under, but as we find out, the businessman has a control on the news that is published, disallowing anything negative to be said about him or his company. This is a wildly concerning example of bias and information control that compromises the truth and true journalism. Another warning from Oliver is that journals will begin writing stories that will please readers for short term, shallow reads, rather than covering the hard hitting stories that may take much longer to read or that are not as exciting.
In his book, The Information Diet, Clay A. Johnson proposes a sort of “framework” for how we should consume information. Similarly to how we consume food with nutritional labels, Johnson argues that we should be deliberate with the way we consume information, rather than gorging ourselves with it throughout the day with our ample technology. Johnson continues with the motif of his food diet when describing that we should consume a “balanced sources”(115). I agree with Johnson’s goal of this deliberate way of accessing information. It is always wise to be conscious of what we are consuming and how much of it we are consuming. To treat this process like the way we treat eating our food may be a bit overkill, but as long as the reader does not overdo his or her information accessing experience, they should be fine.
Oliver and Johnson are certainly right that we have a responsibility for what we consume, and these behaviors of ours are what have caused such a momentous swing in the types of media we see today. I would argue that it is clearly our own online, technological habits that cause us to see the trends in media and news that we see today. The path that news is headed toward appears to be more corrupt and shallow than ever before, and there is simply one way that we can correct this. It will be unlikely, but if people began to buy newspapers more often, or at least put pressure on our local newspapers to report the hard hitting, real news, then the world of journalism would be able to return to its former triumphant state.
