Online Journalism Blog

Brad Kalbeld has seen it all.

From carrying a heavy typewriter around and a Telex machine, he now is able to hold a small tape recorder and — even better — can whip out his iPhone 4 to do the job for him.

Kalbfeld began by showing the filtering that occurs from an event all the way to the reader:

Event, reporter, copy editor, section editor, managing editor, reader.

But with the way that technology has constantly been improving, the role of the editors has been nearly erased. Rather than waiting for and hoping that the editors will publish what you’ve written, reporters can take a video of anything interesting that they see and post it to their computers and the internet for the readers to view.

Professional journalists are scared of citizen journalists.

We are now living in a one-click world and citizen journalists are now able to snap pictures, take videos, take audio of anything going on even quicker than a typical journalist could at times. This ability could steal viewers from the professional journalist and attract them to that citizen journalist’s publication.

You must have news that interacts with the audience nowadays.

Traditional journalists would find a story, report the news and that was it. Now, they must worry about getting the viewers involved and interacting with them to keep them engaged. This transition can be difficult for some.