Modern Journalism

I am proud to live in a society that values free speech and freedom of the press. Although we still have a long way to go, we don’t have to worry about the government knocking down our door in the middle of the night. For the most part we are free to say and do as we please.

I, however, am beginning to fear we are taking this freedom for granted.  I fear even though we have great new ways of communicating with Facebook and Twitter and other social media our communication is becoming less informed and what information we do absorb is too watered down.

We don’t demand the in-depth news articles previous generations had. We don’t demand great story telling. And most of all we don’t demand full accountability. We read four paragraph blogs, watch clips on Youtube or four paragraph news articles and call ourselves informed.

Of course previous generations had their problems with journalism too. They had problems with sensationalism, such as Yellow Journalism in the time of Pulitzer and Hearst and of course tabloids are timeless. But I believe this generation is unique in our empathy towards journalism. We are a jaded generation. Jaded by politics, corporations and, yes, journalism.

So in the words of Anna Maria Tremonti I want everybody to take your journalism back. We all need to invest in great journalism. Don’t just take the freebee newspaper they hand out at bus or subway stations. Buy a New York Times or a Washington Post. Buy any newspaper that will give you real journalism. Trust me, you’ll be happy you took the several minutes to read about something you previously knew nothing about.

And please send me your tweets using the hashtag #takeyourjournalismback because together we can bring back great journalism.