Unit 1: Journalism: The Information that Shapes our World
Who decides what news stories are broadcast on TV, posted on Facebook, or written in the local paper? What is “news,” anyway? In this unit, we will learn all about the world of journalism. We will discover what journalism is and who is involved in the process. We will also learn about different types of journalism and media, including newspapers, magazines, electronic media and photojournalism, and the different type of news they present.
Unit Objectives
What will you learn in this unit? After studying this unit, you will be able to:
• Define journalism.
• Discuss the purpose of journalism.
• Define key terms such as reporter, editor, journalist and audience.
• Discuss the different type of journalism.
• Identify different types of news.
• Explain key roles in the world of journalism.
Introduction
Have you ever heard the quote “the world is your oyster?” When I hear this, I imagine a big shell with a pearl in it – an actual oyster! But this phrase has a different meaning altogether. It means that the world is completely open to us, and is available for us to explore as much as we want. Never has this phrase been more true than now. Today, we have more information at our fingertips than at any other time in history, and we can learn just about anything we want to, whenever we want! All we need to do is hop on a computer, laptop or iPad!
Journalism is all about the news. In fact, its two main purposes are to inform us and entertain us. These days, it is almost impossible to escape what we call the 24-hour news cycle, or the production and consumption of news at all hours of the day. News is We can access the most recent news on our iPhones, on Facebook, on TV, radio, or newspapers, the minute it happens. But news hasn’t always been just a click away.
Can you believe that in the past, our mail was actually delivered by people on horseback? If you lived in the 1850s, it would take almost 8 weeks for a letter to get to someone on the other side of the country. Can you imagine waiting that long if you had something exciting to say? In 1860 the first rider on the Pony Express set out from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. It would take him 10 days to deliver his mail. Riders switched out their horses every 10 miles, and horses ran at a speed of about 10 miles per hour (National Park Service, n.d.)! But this was a great innovation, and significantly improved the speed that our mail and news was delivered (Pony Express National Museum, 2016). Still, some news took a long time to reach people – even very important news!
Luckily for us, news is much easier to access today. If you are interested in how the news is made and shared with the world, then journalism might be the field for you!
Journalism
When we think about journalism, most of us probably envision a newspaper. But journalism includes the whole process of gathering information about current events, packaging it and presenting it to an audience. The way that it is shown to the public is called the media. Other forms of media besides newspapers are radio broadcasts, television segments and yes, even stories posted on social media. Remember, the key thing that distinguishes journalism from other types of writing or reporting is that it deals with current events: things that are happening now or have happened in the recent past. When people write about things that happened in the past, we call that history.
Because journalism is a process and not just a product, it happens in a few stages: interviewing, research, writing, and presenting it to an audience.
Purpose of Journalism
Why even talk about journalism? What impact does it really have on us, anyway? Well, the news that we read, see, or hear shapes the way we view the world, and the choices that we make. Journalists have the opportunity to present the truth about the world we live in. Would you agree that sometimes, it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction, when so many people can share their opinions on the internet or Facebook? It is important that we have access to reliable journalism that tells the truth about important events in our world, so we can take action to make the world a better place.
The purpose of journalism is to inform, or teach, the audience about a topic. If “the world is our oyster,” or our “school,” we can think of journalism as the process that provides the “textbooks” for our “school.” Some journalism is more serious in style, and might even remind us of actually being in school. An article from the New York Times, or a segment on Fox News are examples of this. Some journalism, though, is just about having fun! You might have seen this kind of journalism when you are standing in the checkout line at the grocery store.
We will remember that the news is brought to us through several steps: interviewing and research, writing, and presenting the news to the audience. The purpose of journalism, throughout these three steps, is to make sure the news that is presented is accurate and captivating.
First are foremost, the news has to be accurate. In 2016, several college journalists around the country have had to stand up for their right to report accurate news in their university papers. For various reasons, some college newspapers are being sued for reporting accurate stories! With budgets for professional newspapers being cut around the country, it is even more important for young journalists to step into the profession and demand their free speech rights (NYT Saul).
So how can we tell that what we hear or read is true? This is one of the major issues of journalism in our modern time. When we were little, we probably played the game Telephone. You sit in a circle and one child whispers a message into the ear of the next child. Around and around it goes until the last child in the circle hears the message. And is the message that the last child announces always the same as what the first child said? Usually not! Maybe someone silly decided to change it, or they really didn’t hear what was whispered to them. In any case, we do not want what happens in Telephone to happen in our news media!
But believe it or not, news stories can become twisted from their original facts just like in the game Telephone. It is vital that journalists conduct their own research and report news in a way that keeps the audience’s trust. To do this, journalists often rely on independent news gathering agencies such as the Associated Press (AP) or Reuters to collect non-biased and fair material and distribute it to news organizations. The AP is a non-profit organization while Reuters operates as part of a corporation, but the two share the same goals. Journalists are also required to fact check their material, or verify that it is true. Journalists prefer to use what are called primary sources, which means the source that is closest to the event. Your diary is a primary source of what is happening in your life. Other examples of primary sources are interviews and documents written by someone who directly experienced the event.
Journalists prefer to rely on primary sources instead of secondary sources. Secondary sources are things that have been written or reported about a primary source or event. The person who created the secondary source did not directly experience the event. Let’s take your diary example again, and pretend that you just got a new job. Chances are, if you have a diary, you have written something about that job in your diary. Your diary was the primary source. You wrote it, and you are the expert on what happened and what you think about your job. A secondary source about your life might be a phone conversation that your mom had with your grandma. Your grandma asked how you were doing at your new job, and your mom used the information she observed – what you said about your job, how you acted when you came home – to tell grandma how your job was going. Your mom wasn’t there with you at your new job, was she? So what is the problem with relying on secondary sources? Why is it better for grandma to talk to you directly about your job instead of trusting your mom’s opinion? Well, it’s just that. An opinion! Chances are there are things about your job that you did not tell your mom! When we want the most accurate information, it is important to go to the primary source.
If you are a journalist, collecting primary source materials is one way you will fact check, to make sure you are presenting the truth to your audience. There is another way that facts can get distorted, though. Have you ever gotten into an argument with a sibling, and each tried to tell your parents about what happened? I bet your stories were not exactly the same! It might have even been hard to keep your cool. Mom and dad, on the other hand, could probably stay calm and figure out what happened, because they were not directly involved. Similarly, journalists must try to keep a professional distance from the stories they cover, rather than letting their emotions affect their reporting. There are times when journalists do share their personal opinions, which we will talk about later, but most of the time, it is their job to only report the facts.
Finally, journalists have to present the material in a way that is captivating to the audience. In an age where we have 40 apps on our phones and 500 channels to choose from, we do not hesitate to switch apps or change the channel if we get bored! Journalists today face an ever-increasing challenge of keep an audience’s attention, but it is an important part of their job if they want to inform the public (American Press Institute, 2016).
Key Roles in Journalism
So just who are the people who create and bring us the news every day? In journalism, many people in various roles work hard to bring us the news that informs and entertains us. As you remember, news is brought to us through several steps – interviewing and research, writing, and presenting the news to the audience. The different roles in journalism each work in one (or all!) of these steps of the journalism process.
Journalist
All of the people we will talk about can also be called journalists. When the news agency is small, a journalist may wear several of these “hats.” For example, the reporter might be responsible for editing other reporter’s work too! In the end, journalists are all working to ensure that the information they provide is as accurate and interesting to the audience as possible.
Reporter
Chances are, we can at least recognize the faces of the people who bring us news on TV every day. But a reporter’s job is much more than presenting news on TV. Reporters are the journalists who work with the first two steps of the journalism process – they research and gather information, and compile that information into articles or scripts that will be presented to the audience in print, or by those people we see on TV all the time. If you were a reporter, you would likely spend your days talking to lots of different people – definitely not a boring job!
Editor
You have researched, interviewed, and written a report or script. Even professional reporters sometimes need help making sure their writing is completely accurate and exciting. In journalism, reporters team up with editors, who check the reporter’s work for truthfulness and clarity.
There are a few different types of editors who make sure that the final product is something that will inform and captivate the audience. An assignment editor will look at the “big picture” of the story to make sure it makes makes sense. They will also check the work for accuracy – remember how important our primary sources are? It is important that the news we see and hear is actually correct! In an editorial to the Durango Herald in November 2016, a woman complained that based on the headline on the front page of the newspaper that day, she actually could not tell which candidate had won the 2016 presidential election (Durango Herald)! Assignment editors will make sure headlines, or the titles of stories that appear in large font, are excessively clear, because some people do not have time to read the whole article.
Next, a copy editor will look for errors in spelling, punctuation or grammar. Isn’t it amazing that these days, our computers can do a lot of this work for us? It still takes a human eye to spot many errors, though, which is why the copy editor’s job is so important.
Audience
Once the news has been written and edited, it needs to go somewhere. We can think of the presentation of journalism kind of like a conversation. There have to be two people in the mix, or one person will just be talking to himself! The audience are the people who view or read the finished work produced by the reporter and editor. Even if you are not considering journalism as a career, you are still an important part of the process as an audience member! In fact, you are so important that reporters make an effort to “know their audience” when they compose pieces of news (Silllesen, 2015).
Different audiences have different needs from a piece of journalism, and require it to be presented in different ways, at different speeds. Let’s say you live in a neighborhood that has just sprung a natural gas leak. The things you need from a news story about this will be very different from someone who is watching the royal wedding on TV. In both cases, you rely on a piece of journalism for information, but the way the news is put together will be very different in each circumstance.
If you are facing a natural gas leak around your home, you will need to know a few things – and fast! Is it safe to turn on appliances? Do I need to leave my home for awhile? If you do not have this information, it could be life-threatening. So the information provided by journalists needs to be focused on the gas leak only, and it needs to be delivered as fast as possible. A newspaper will not be fast enough, so the media might rely on social media to communicate their message to you.
On the other hand, when you are watching coverage of the royal wedding, you don’t need quick information about one thing. Instead, you will probably watch for awhile, and want to know some details about lots of different things. Where did the princess find her dress? How old is the church they are getting married in? Why is her grandma wearing that silly hat? You probably want this news to be covered on TV, because it wouldn’t be very exciting to just listen to some talk about the wedding. We want to feel like we are there with the royal couple, cheering them on from the pews! If we saw an article about this in the newspaper or social media, we might not even read it! Exciting news about a joyous event connects best with audiences when it is presented live through a television broadcast, for example.
Do you see how important it is for reporters to know their audience? If they do not spend time considering the needs of the audience and the media they use to deliver news, all of their hard work might be wasted.
Types of Journalism
Because different audiences have different needs, reporters and editors need to consider what type of media to present the news in. We remember that several types of media are newspapers, magazines, electronic media and photojournalism, and each is particularly good at communicating ideas to different audiences. If you prefer to learn by reading, you might check out a newspaper, magazine to gain in-depth knowledge about local and international events. If you prefer to learn visually, photojournalism presents news through photography.
Newspapers, magazines, and photojournalism have traditionally been considered types of print media, or tangible sources that a reader can hold in their hands. However, today, because many types of this media are found online, these sources are transitioning to electronic media formats, or those that use digital platforms.
Newspapers are news documents usually produced daily or weekly. It is difficult to pinpoint when the first newspaper began. Some people might even consider ancient cave drawings to be the first newspaper! (image) Scholars agree that the first printed daily newspaper circulated around ancient China, beginning in 1340 (Rogers, 1909, p. 3). This is over 100 years before the printing press would be invented in Europe, and revolutionize literacy and news distribution forever! In any case, most of us are familiar with newspapers – we see them lying outside our neighbor’s doors everyday! Although readership of print newspapers is declining as more and more papers digitize, they are still an important medium in which news is delivered.
Magazines, which are bound books produced monthly that can contain news and personal interest stories, are also becoming increasingly digitized, but many people still look to them for news and entertainment. You might recognize some of the most popular magazine titles from the supermarket checkout aisle: Newsweek, National Geographic, or TIME are easy to recognize at a glance.
If you are like a lot of people and prefer to learn visually, you might like accessing news through photojournalism. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and many times, photos can communicate with audiences more quickly and emotionally than even words can. Sometimes journalists endanger their own lives to report the truth. Photojournalists are at an even greater risk when they report in war-torn or volatile areas, because, as we know, photos do not lie. When their images are published online, the world has instant access to exactly what is happening in a troubled area. Sadly, sometimes governments in these areas take drastic measures to make sure photojournalists cannot distribute their work. In 2016, 29-year-old photojournalist Mahmoud Abou Zeid was jailed in Egypt for photographing clashes between the Egyptian military and civilian supporters of Egypt’s last president, Mohamed Morsi (Goldman & Youssef, 2016). You can see the protests that Zeid captured below.
Which type of media do you think is most popular today? You might be surprised to learn that in the past five years alone, journalism has changed more than in the last one hundred years combined! In 2004, a brilliant Harvard University student named Mark Zuckerberg had an amazing idea: he decided to create a website where students from Harvard would be able to interact with each other on a virtual “yearbook.” Twelve years later in 2016, almost one-sixth of the world’s population uses this website! Facebook and social media have changed the way that people view news, making electronic media, or the most popular form today. About 40 percent of adults in the United States view Facebook as a source of news! (Facebook is eating the world).
In 2016, the Columbia Journalism Review reported that the AP and Reuters (those two big news-gathering agencies) produce thousands of automated stories per month! This means that not only are jobs like editing being outsourced to computers, but the actually writing itself is, too! For now, these features work a lot like Siri on an iPhone. They can find concrete facts by searching the internet, but they cannot yet interpret them (Zender). This means there is still a vital place for human journalists in our news media. But with so much of our news being compiled automatically and presented on social and electronic media, it is more important than ever for journalists to make sure their reporting is accurate!
Types of News
Once you have decided where and how the news will be presented, you need to decide what type of story will best express the information you want to share with your audience (University of Richmond, n.d.). If you are covering the presidential election, you will probably present an analysis piece to your audience, which looks at many different sides of one issue. What is each candidate’s stance on issues like education, healthcare, and the economy? An analysis will draw information from primary sources like candidate speeches and policy documents, and will present it in language that is relatively easy for the public to understand. Remember that the main goal of journalism is to inform! The analysis piece will help the public decide which candidate they want to elect.
Have you heard the phrase “there are more than two sides to a story?” Everyone has an opinion and a way that they express themselves. Journalists write editorials when they have a strong opinion on a particular issue. Remember, when they are reporting to the public they have a responsibility to me and you to only report the facts. But, like all of us, sometimes journalists need to share their personal opinions. Most newspapers have an editorial section set aside just for this purpose. In fact, editorials are special pieces of journalism because anyone can write one. If you look in the local paper today, you might see an editorial written by someone you know!
A feature is a light-hearted story that is determined by the audience’s interest. During the fall, a lot of people have one main interest: baseball! A feature story about the World Series might follow one fan who has gone to every one of their team’s games this season. Feature stories weave informative information into personal stories, and are very good at meeting both goals of journalism: to inform and entertain!
Summary
Have you noticed that journalism is all about you? As the audience, journalists keep you in mind when they cover news developments through analysis pieces. You even have the opportunity to express your own opinion in an editorial, and journalists consider what you will find interesting when writing a feature story.
It’s amazing to think that everyday there are thousands of reporters and editors creating news articles, electronic media and photojournalism, all to help us learn more about the world and make good decisions with our lives. If you want to be part of a profession that influences every person around the globe, then journalism might be a good fit for you!
Vocabulary
24-hour news cycle: the production and consumption of news at all hours of the day
Journalism: the process of gathering information about current events, packaging it and presenting it to an audience
Media: the way the news is shown to the public
Associated Press (AP): a non-profit independent news-gathering agency that collect non-biased and fair material and distribute it to news organizations
Reuters: a corporate independent news-gathering agency that collect non-biased and fair material and distribute it to news organizations
Fact check: the process journalists use to verify that information is true
Primary source: the source that is closest to the event, such as an interview or written account
Secondary source: sources that have been written or reported about a primary source or event
Journalist: broad term for those people involved in gathering and presenting news to an audience
Reporter: a journalist who researches and gathers information, compiling it into articles or scripts
Editor: a journalist who checks the reporter’s work for truthfulness and clarity
Assignment editor: a journalist who looks at the “big picture” of the story and checks for accuracy
Headline: the title of a news story that appears in large font
Copy editor: a journalist who looks for errors in spelling, punctuation or grammar
Audience: the people who view or read the finished work produced by the reporter and editor
Newspaper: news documents that are published daily or weekly
Magazine: bound books produced monthly that can contain news and personal interest stories
Photojournalism: news presented through photography
Print media: media formats that are tangible
Electronic media: media formats that use digital platforms
Analysis: journalism piece that looks at many different sides of one issue
Editorial: journalism piece where the author expresses his or her opinion
Feature: a story, usually light-hearted, that is determined by the audience’s interests
Sources
Ponyexpress.org
https://www.nps.gov/poex/learn/historyculture/index.htm
http://www.cjr.org/currents/know_your_audience.php
http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/journalism/types.html
http://www.cjr.org/analysis/cyborg_virtual_reality_reuters_tracer.php
https://durangoherald.com/articles/118266-paper-displayed-bad-form-and-journalism