Purpose Statement For Journalism

In an era of global technology, instant news, infomercials, electronic town meetings, and “Made for TV Documentaries,” the borderlines between news and analysis, news and entertainment, news and fiction are constantly shifting.

"Journalism isn't just writing," Clara said to the student audience, describing the 'wide scope' of tasks in her typical day. From flicking through social media, keeping up with gossip, and compiling opinions on a recent trend, Clara has a range of articles to present to her readers.

Clay Shirky who wrote Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (1993) argues that society doesn’t need newspapers society needs journalism to save society. Shirky supports this argument by giving a historical background to the problems newspapers face and how the problems have developed over time and the solutions society has came up with. The blogger concludes that in order for journalism to go farther new models must be created in place of past molds. Shirky directs this blog toward the current and future generations in attempt to motivate new models and methods of journalism.

Clive Thompson and Neil Postman are authors who discuss specific mediums through writing. Postman writes about the television and newspaper and Thompson writes about the internet age. Both of these authors use the same approach on their respected mediums. In comparison they both have the same piece of writing. Comparing side by side, it reveals a bigger idea that the communication medium always outweigh the cons.

　　In the essay “Reading and Thought”, Dwight MacDonlad talked about the kind of poor reading people are attached to in modern society. MacDonald believed reading materials such as Times and New York Times are too overwhelming for the readers. Readers tend to skim through the reading materials because most of the reading do not have any connections with their daily lives. Moreover, MacDoanld claimed that the readings people do these days are not thoughtful. The readings are rather irrelevant toward the readers. It is because the journalists to produce dull pieces of readings which are meant to be skimmed through without having too much thoughts involved. As the journalists do not have much consideration of the materials they produced. To the journalists the readings they produce are just a series of news that should be read driftly and left behind with no thoughful idea needed to be informed. These effects caused modern society to have a poor reading habits because people do not reflect and give time to think about the readings they did. Readers casually accept the readings even though they do not have provide any resourceful information for the readers.

In the article by Tom Engelhardt, an author tells about journalism during his childhood and how is it different from now. When his was young, New York had 10 major papers like The Daily News, The Daily Mirror, The Herald Tribune and a few magazines: Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Look and etc. Then he thought, that this is the golden era of journalism. All of these papers run the world, people got news from it and it was hard to imagine life without it. But what do we have now? Thousands of papers and magazines appear in our lives. We have a chose what to read today. But these papers are still just papers. We read someone's ideas and thoughts. The main bursting happened when we god online sources, «With the rise of the Internet, we're no

Dana Gioia writes the article “Why Literature Matters” for all the readers of the New York Times. He expresses the importance of literature because of the consequences that could result from the lack of reading, especially for young adults between the age 18 and 24. Throughout the article he explains that reading and literacy have decreased even though “income rose to unforeseen levels, college attendance ballooned, and access to information increased enormously.” His diction thoroughly explains that reading has decreased while the resources and opportunities have increased. Gioia appeals logically by using evidence to support claims, appeals ethically by giving reasoning to develop ideas, and appeals emotionally by using diction to add power to the ideas expressed.

Journalists like Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe are given special opportunities to be allowed to go to places that other people are not. They see things that most people will never see and hear things that most people will never hear. New Journalism is an, creative, and dramatic way of reporting and presenting the subject matter. This branch of journalism uses facts while including techniques from the world of fiction to present the information in a refreshingly realistic approach. America's cultural and political landscape is one of the many ways that can reshape journalism.

I am extremely interested in the Journalism Residency program, as I have been fascinated with the Middle East and their international relations for years. Participating in this program would allow me to explore this interest while obtaining college credit towards my journalism degree. The area of journalism that excites me the most is political journalism. The Journalism Residency program could help me solidify this by throwing me into a new country and forcing me to

I’ve thought of medical careers, a career in psychiatry, forensics, and writing. After plenty of research, experience, and self-evaluation, I think I’ve found a fairly solid fit. A fast moving, creative environment surrounded by interesting people, whilst utilizing my love for literature, a career in publishing is calling my name. Specifically, a career as an editor. Both book editing and script editing sound appealing to me, but for now I’ll focus on book editing. As an editor, I would have a working environment that suits me and appropriate skills for the job, such as interpersonal skills, language skills, writing skills, creativity, and being detail oriented. (bls.gov) Also, values that are important to me would be a focus in this career, such as independence, achievement, and recognition. A career as an editor is a fulfilling career goal because of the ability to improve communication. (Cole 2)

The belief that journalism is in decline has triggered major alarms, because society needs an informational environment that is easily available to all citizens such as newspapers. There is a large body of journalist that suggests that if television has taken over from the press as our main source of news this may limit our capacity to learn about public affairs; newspapers are believed to be far more effective than television at conveying detailed information necessary to understand complex and detailed issues. There is also widespread concern that if journalism fails as a profession it will not be able to reach large sections of the community, particularly younger or less educated readers. This may reinforce a growing gap among citizens between the information that they receive.

Both traditional and new media provide information, news and messages to inform us happenings around the world (UK Essays, 2013). Regardless of if it is the newspaper, magazine or Facebook, e-magazine, all types of media are able to relay information and entertainment.

Literary journalistic discourse is “perhaps the most intertextual of all texts, referring to other texts” in terms of transforming prior historical stories and restructuring conventional literary and journalistic genres and discourses in an attempt to generate a new one, that is, literary journalism (Mills, Discourse 65-66). Thus, the journalistic discourse cannot be but dialogic and intertextual because its raw material is a news story that can be manipulated, adapted, and adopted by the literary journalist in order to compete other versions of the story. It “assimilates a variety of discourses” that “always to some extent question and relativize each other’s authority” (Waugh 6). Literary journalists, thus, are actively engaged in interpreting and scrutinizing the discursive practices of intertextuality in order to generate their distinctive but hybrid discourse. This hybrid discourse can be

I was 18 when we moved to the United States from Cameroon in 2010. I had always known I wanted to be in journalism, yet had little knowledge of how the media worked or what being a journalist even entailed. I had a passion for telling stories, and zero experience or hope that I would someday be able to do so in a way that affects everyday people, and effects positive change. As far as I knew, journalism was the ruling government’s tool for communicating what it deemed fit for public knowledge, and stifling any information that remotely threatened the political status quo. Only in the following years would I come to grasp the power of media and communication, in a journey that has led me to this very moment.

To wholly have a grasp on how this new founded approach to journalism has changed alongside technology—as well as understanding the dangers such openness brings forth—one has to understand what exactly those changes are. Primarily, those that are writing for the sake of offering information have, whether willingly or not, fed into the usage of social media as it has become a centralized method of distribution that is relatively inescapable with the current times. As such those framing the news for the masses find an authentic avenue to stay in contact via social media that has benefits ranging from, “its extraordinary newsgathering potential; its potential as a new tool to engage the audience; and as a way of distributing our news” (Eltringham, 2012), all of which are deeply different from the presentation of reporting that occurred during earlier eras. Days of strongly structured instances of journalism that could not travel with such speed have been replaced as, “social media has trashed many of the foundations on