Spring Break
Panel: Journalism's future unclear
Advisory Committee for Gallivan Program says Internet radically changes profession
Madeline Buckley
Issue date: 9/30/08 Section: News
The Advisory Committee for the Gallivan Program of Journalism discussed the changing landscape of Journalism with students Monday, focusing on the students' future career options in the industry.
The panelists looked at how technology has changed the traditional form of print journalism and what those changes will mean in the future.
"Newspapers will never quite be the same," Bill Dwyre, former sports editor and current columnist for the Los Angeles Times, said regarding the effect of the Internet on print journalism.
The upcoming years will be a period of adjustment for print journalists because of the fast information available on the web, but newspapers and the Internet are different enough to be maintained on a different basis, Dwyre said. For example, papers might no longer print lists of final scores of various games, but the papers will tell the reader why a team won, he said.
Dwyre said the next generation of journalists would be part of the adjustment process.
"You will be part of the sorting through process," he said.
The panelists agreed the changing industry will offer opportunities to versatile and determined journalists.
These changes in the industry open a wide area of chance for emerging journalists, executive producer of The Koppel Group for Discovery Networks Tom Bettag said.
"This is now the Wild West with so many outlets and so many jobs," he said.
The older generation of reporters that say journalism is dying say so because they are scared of new reporters, whose brains are wired to the new mediums of journalism, Bettag said.
Metro columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and former Observer Editor-in-Chief Monica Yant Kinney said younger journalists have a chance to be the first reporters in a new way of producing news.
If students have an opportunity to do something new, they can afford to try it, whereas a reporter at 42 or 43 would not be able to do so, Kinney said.
The panelists looked at how technology has changed the traditional form of print journalism and what those changes will mean in the future.
"Newspapers will never quite be the same," Bill Dwyre, former sports editor and current columnist for the Los Angeles Times, said regarding the effect of the Internet on print journalism.
The upcoming years will be a period of adjustment for print journalists because of the fast information available on the web, but newspapers and the Internet are different enough to be maintained on a different basis, Dwyre said. For example, papers might no longer print lists of final scores of various games, but the papers will tell the reader why a team won, he said.
Dwyre said the next generation of journalists would be part of the adjustment process.
"You will be part of the sorting through process," he said.
The panelists agreed the changing industry will offer opportunities to versatile and determined journalists.
These changes in the industry open a wide area of chance for emerging journalists, executive producer of The Koppel Group for Discovery Networks Tom Bettag said.
"This is now the Wild West with so many outlets and so many jobs," he said.
The older generation of reporters that say journalism is dying say so because they are scared of new reporters, whose brains are wired to the new mediums of journalism, Bettag said.
Metro columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and former Observer Editor-in-Chief Monica Yant Kinney said younger journalists have a chance to be the first reporters in a new way of producing news.
If students have an opportunity to do something new, they can afford to try it, whereas a reporter at 42 or 43 would not be able to do so, Kinney said.