Plenty more where I came from
I spoke to a group of young journalists today at the University of Utah. The Tribune, Valley Journals, the U, BYU and Weber State annually offer a conference for high school students from around the state. We teach them to misquote, sensationalize and basically be elitists. The conference is always packed.I taught a session on the rise of blogging as journalism. Because every kid in the room uses Facebook or has a personal blog and several of the high school papers have blogs, we are peers in this online adventure. I asked them as many questions as they asked me.
One thing knocked me out. With all the talk about the demise of newspapers, with all the supposed distrust of and contempt for journalists — many of these kids still want to go into the business. The even have that gleam in their eyes that gives authority figures the heebie-jeebies.
Katherine Paterson, the news editor at the Park City High School Prospector, admits she's a "news junkie." "I actutally read newspapers all the time. Nobody my age reads newspapers."
Elle Dougherty, features editor at P.C.High, plans to major in journalism. (I told her not to.) She wants to work as a journalist on her way to doing serious writing. (I warned her news writing will ruin her.)
Paterson plans to learn Arabic and get embedded with the troops. I laughed, too, until she said:
I'm assuming we'll be in the Middle East forever.I asked them what they thought of blogs as journalism. Dougherty says blogs allow her to find other people who share her opinions. "I like to know I'm not the only one."
Patherson offered this handy rule of thumb:
You can't trust blogs.
Write it down.
5 Comments:
"You can't trust blogs" nor can you trust more than a handful of so-called professional journalists. And none of them in the TV entertainment shows that try to masquerade as news. (You know, the 6 and 10 bunch.) So what's a real news junkie to do?
True news junkies listen to NPR. Those who distrust NPR get their "news" from such reputable and unbiased sources as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly etc.
I was in the seminar today with Mr. Watchol and found it to be absolutly amazing and really started a fire under me to get my school's paper up on and going on a blog. I'm very excited, and Glen gave us so many helpful hints on getting into the blogging side of journalism. It's an interesting concept and I hope in the long run it will be a positive one, both in the world of journalism, and in my small staff at Davis High. My advisor is as siked as we are! Thank you so much Mr. Warchol! And don't worry, I don't plan to seriously plunge into the life of a journalist. -Jimmy Dotson: Reporter for The Davis Dart
After following the Prop 8 news stories, it is apparent that the majority of the newspapers anymore don't care about the facts. They seem to get their information off of blogs.
Case in point is how many newspaper articles say the Church donated upwards of $20 million to Prop 8.
"The Church"? What exactly is the Church? Certainly you don't mean the Catholics. What religion is so elitist that they would refer to themselves as "the Church"? Hmm, I wonder.
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