Blog Post #4

Kimberly Pena
Journalism 360-01
Professor Yavner

    Social media has impacted the world of journalism is numerous of ways. Now more than ever journalists can interact with viewers and readers in real-time causing there to be things for journalists to be excited about as well as concerned. Journalists now have more an effective way of crowd-sourcing and talk to engage with the people who read and view their writing and productions. On Facebook you can ask users to show what is going on around them and journalist can go live, and users can share your broadcast to their users, spreading your message to a wider audience. In the excerpt, it states, “With the rise of social media come opportunities but also challenges for sport communication professionals. The widespread adoption of social media among both professional communicators and their audiences has opened up new lanes of communication between fans, teams, and athletes that are difficult to control and challenge established roles and practices (Price, Farrington, & Hall, 2013).” Despite the great things social media provides us, there are also negative things that can make things go haywire for journalists. With social media, crowdsourcing is a tool we can use, however, there are the risks that the information is bias, inaccurate or exaggerated and, so it is the job of the journalist to filter out the truth.
    Despite some of the downfalls, the upside certainly outweighs it. Social media has given consumers a new tool to consume sports news in a more effective way. In the excerpt, it states,” Americans spend more time on social networks and blogs than on any other type of Web site (Nielsen, 2012). Because of this trend, social-media sites have become a pathway to information. In a 2011 study, 19% of Americans reported encountering news or news headlines on a social-network site (Mitchell, Rosenstiel, & Christian, 2012), and all but one of the top 25 news Web sites in the United States derive at least some of their audience through Facebook (Olmstead, Mitchell, & Rosenstiel, 2011).” Through social media, viewers can now connect with whatever is going in the palm of their hands at any moment they desire to. Let’s face it, with the younger generation it is difficult to see them consume their news via a newspaper. The world is changing and so is journalism.
    Also with social media, new skills are required from journalists that were not required before. During games, journalists are asked to give updates on game action and scores. There are also those journalists who go into postgame interviews and tweet quotes from the players and the coaches. In a way, social media is a way a journalist can tell their story. With your tweets, you already have the game action as well as the highlights and then right after you have your post-game interviews all placed nicely for you on your twitter feed. It is important for journalists to know of all that comes with social media and the tool it is for the profession.