Journalistic View of Web 2.0

Before the internet existed, news and information were delivered in completely different ways. Some people relied on the 6 o'clock newscast every day, or reading the newspaper each morning, but that has changed because of Web 2.0.

Journalists are seeing that newspapers are dying and moving to the internet websites. Why is this happening?

In today's world, news is 24/7 because people want the news NOW. Web 2.0 has made everything more and more user-friendly to the point where daily televised newscasts are not enough. Newspapers are not enough. People want their information as fast as they can get it, and this makes it extremely challenging for journalists.

Journalists are supposed to be a source for breaking news, but that doesn't always happen. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are often ways people find out news. Whether it is accurate or not, anybody can post something and the word will spread within minutes.

What many journalists are doing is creating an account on Twitter to get their news out there first. This is a huge issue in social media. If a journalist has breaking news, their job may not only be to report it, but to write a story about it and link readers to the publication's website.

The first person to report the breaking news will likely be able to get more readers to click the link and go to the website. However, timing is impeccable and doesn't always guarantee success in this case.

What if their information is inaccurate or doesn't include the full story. The issue that journalists are having is trying to post first, but still be completely accurate and high-quality. One mistake could crush one's credibility.

"The reality is that news no longer breaks; it tweets. Some 200 million people learn about breaking events as they happen, triggering a network effect that demonstrates the reach and velocity of social physics. The human network is becoming a force, a distribution network that rivals traditional newswires." (From buisnessweek.com).

Below are a couple of charts that illustrate how information circulated before and after Twitter. (These were found on arkarthick.com). If you click on the images, they should get larger and easier to read.

The charts above illustrate that the news spreads much faster than it did prior to Twitter.

Twitter Co-Founder, Biz Stone, shared his opinion on Journalism and Twitter during an interview with Rory O'Connor from the Huffington Post.

"We think that social media is largely comparable to traditional approach, in that credibility is key. In the future, social media tools will help the news media know such things as the location of the person reporting, we will be able to provide a social graph of our users... Can we then triangulate about their credibility via algorithm? We can certainly begin to get very sophisticated on credibility with new tools, and combine that with journalists leveraging open systems such as ours to find and vet crowd sources, story leads, etc."

Twitter has made a huge impact on Journalism and continues to be possibly the biggest source for breaking news. I believe that news organizations should use Twitter to their benefit to inform and update their readers faster.

Again, people, including myself, want news as soon as it happens. We can now get updates when we are away from the computer, using our phones as a source of receiving news, thanks to apps. All of it is user-friendly as you can control who you follow on Twitter and what kind of news updates you want to receive.

It truly is amazing how much of an impact a simple social network can have on journalists and news organizations. As we continue to progress, I believe Twitter will become more useful and beneficial for journalistic purposes.