How Social Media Changed Journalism – Forever

Walking down any street, in just about any city in America, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who at some point didn’t have his head down and staring intently at their sleek IPhone or Android device.

Social media has allowed people to connect with people on the other side of the earth and be in tune with what is going on 24/7.

 Today, all someone has to do to find out what is going on in the world is to look down at their Twitter, Facebook, CNN, or USA Today app on their phones to see what is trending and what major events just transpired. And you can do that anytime you want. Before social media, there were only certain times you could get your news, which meant if a tragic event took place, you’d have to wait until the evening or next morning to find out what happened.

 Today, anybody who snaps a picture with their phone or sends out a 140-character tweet calls themselves a journalist. Social media allows anyone who is around a “Breaking News” event to pull out his or her phones and either through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram informs people with a message or picture about what is going on.

Journalism isn’t dying, it’s being reborn. It’s not about flipping through the pages of a newspaper or magazine anymore; instead, the swipe is the new flip. Now, people can get their news on their phones and/or tablets where, with the electronic version of various publications, a simple swipe across the devices screen will reveal a new page of the publication.

Although journalism isn’t dying, there is one medium of journalism that, in at least a couple of decades will be phased out. There is still one generation that is used to flipping through the pages of newspaper, but the generation after (The [WIFI] Connection Generation) gets all their information from their phones and tablets, so the print publication will no longer be necessary.


Just look at Newsweek, they abandoned their print publication in favor of an all-online publication.

If you search any major news organization on Google, you will find that they have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Linkedin, They post pictures from their news broadcasts and advertisements for upcoming broadcasts on Facebook, live news updates on Twitter, and job opportunities on Linkedin. Not to mention, they have their own websites where their news stories are.

There is one problem with getting all of your news exclusively online. In a newspaper, you know all the stories are recent, but online if you go to the news section of CNN, for example, you won’t find the same stories you do in the print edition. This inconsistency can be frustrating because the reader has to then hunt for the recent stories.

The ways that journalism has evolved recently has made life easier for journalists working at a news organization, especially. For breaking news and sports, social media makes it easier for them to update people on new developments in a story. If a sports journalist writes a story, but after he publishes it a player gets injured or in trouble with the league, then the journalist can hop on his personal twitter account or the news organization account and update fans on the current status of that player.

Social media has connected billions of people, spanning all continents, all through, Likes, Tweets, Pins, and Pokes.

Instagram or Vine

Originally a photo-sharing service, Instagram that was launched in October 2010, has now added a new feature to their repertoire, video-sharing. It would be surprising if this move wasn't motivated by the success of a service called Vine, that was launched five months ago as a video-sharing service that allows user to post six second looping videos that gives us glimpses of the lives and passions of the user. To illustrate the success Vine has experience in such a short time, just about a month ago on April 9, 2013, Vine became the number one of the most downloaded app available on Apple's App Store.

Now that both Instagram has rolled out their video-sharing service, what does that mean for Vine?

Neither service is going anywhere, companies, organizations, and people are going to choose one or the other. The question I have is, what is the demographic going to be like for each service?

Which Video-Sharing Service do you Prefer?

 Some loyal vine users insist they are sticking with Vine no matter what, and I tend to agree with those users. When I start using an app on my iPhone and another similar, more popular app is developed, I find it hard to leave that app for the newer one. But why do we have to choose? Why don't companies stick with what they know or what put them on the map?

Instagram is to photos, what Vine is to looping videos.

Let me know what you think?