September 21st, 2025 Skyler Hart
What is a journalist? People have been questioning the definition of a journalist for many years, since the definition has transformed so has the roles in journalism. With technology consistently changing and updating anyone with a smartphone, laptop, or even a tablet can post or broadcast from anywhere. Considering the huge incline in social media people have been taking advantage of this by finding jobs in social media. Seeing as people who want to be a journalist no longer need to work for newspaper companies, they can post breaking news stories through Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube faster then writing a news story. It also reaches younger generations this way as well. These changes in journalism have started offering more opportunities for journalist as well by using the 24/7 news cycle, convergence and modular.
The 24/7 News Cycle has added a lot of extra pressure to journalist as they are now trying to produce multiple stories throughout a day, so the users don’t see the same story multiple times. They are trying to provide at least three stories so the users can view different stories at breakfast time then they do during lunch and dinner. Not only do they want them to have three news stories published on their website but they want to make sure that these stories are news worthy and include the newest information. Even though that is a lot for the journalist to ensure that many stories are written and posted throughout a day it does ensure that the users come back to the website to view and obtain information, which is overall what a journalist does.
Besides The 24/7 News Cycle journalism has also been impacted by Convergence. Convergence has two different meanings when it comes to journalism and both have impacted it. The first meaning is to combined media, including audio text, and video. This impacts journalist because a lot of people typically learn a single form of journalism when they first started out, especially those who may have started at a newspaper company. Combining these not only means they have to learn how to use online formating but they also have to learn how to use something to take videos with or audio record with. Which may be difficult if they never had to do that before.
Then there is Modular content. This is like making small videos like Tik Tok. It is a way to grab the users attention by using small clips or videos to gain interest. This has impacted journalism because it may get more users to try to find the rest of the story, and stay longer on news sites.
Overall online journalism can no longer be considered one specific thing since the world is constantly changing, evolving, and combining the things what we thought journalism was.
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September 11th, 2025 Skyler Hart
I am not going to lie and say I keep up with the news at all levels, but I do try to monitor my hometown on a regular basis. I find this news through The Clark County Press website, although this is more than my hometown I like to know what’s going on in the surrounding areas as well. Other than that I really enjoy reading about natural disasters. Not so much because of the incident itself but more for how the communities are able to help each other back up after it happens.
When it comes to the news I prefer to use Google as a search engine. As for the news sites I use NBC News, USA Today, and The Clark County Press. As for AI in this digital world I try not to use it as it isn’t always reliable because it pulls from all the information on Google and not just the reliable information. However, using Google as my search engine it will sometimes pop up with an AI overview about things I looked up including news aspects. So when this happens I sometimes glance into it but I always verify that information with my trusted news resources to get the full story and make sure the information given to me was not fake news. Looking into the news I tend to read about it and watch videos. Out of these two formats I prefer watching news videos, so I can feel the emotions of what everyone is experiencing and view clips from the actual event.
With news being so interactive these days and making it easier for people to communicate with journalists, I have personally never reached out to them or even committed to a post. I would say that with social media it has made reaching out to them even easier yet. I have had a few instances where social media has led me to news. It was actually facebook that led me to my local news in my hometown. I have also had friends who would share stories to me that they thought I would enjoy. Other than that I haven’t really gotten too far into other ways of finding news like: Bluesky, X, blogs or podcasts. I wouldn’t be against trying them though so all suggestions are welcome.
Making sure a story is true can be tricky and depend on a lot of things. I like to look at the last updated or posted date. Then I will try and find the author of the piece and see if they are qualified to talk about the information they wrote about. Other than that I look for grammar, spelling and small incorrect information that I would know. Those are the main steps I take to find out if the news stories are correct or not. These are not necessarily the right steps to take but they are just quick ways that I have used to help weed out the fake news. With fake news being everywhere I am sure I have ran into it but I have never thought something is real and it turned out to be fake that I am aware of.
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