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.  

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2025 at 12:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.