Who asked you?

Maybe it is because everyone is trying to act as if they know exactly what direction the world of journalism is taking, but every person who teaches me journalism always seems to be telling me the same things:

Social Networking and People’s Opinions.

Social Networking seems be the journalism equivalent of ‘the second coming of Jesus’. Every journalist who wants to stay on trend is running to Twitter like a duck to mysterious waters. Many just tweet about they’re own articles, (many of which are pretty great, although I didn’t need the advertisement for it.) many seem to end up erupting into spats with other journalists or even celebrities, with everyone watching open mouthed as the news reporter becomes the news maker. Some journalists tweet the usual useless information that we all do about how wonderful sandwiches are and asking who the hell Rebecca Black is.

But Twitter’s crowning glory to most, is it’s ability to link us with the world of journalism and more importantly for us to give our opinion any time we like, whether journalists want to hear it – or not. Comment boxes scatter every newspaper website, shamelessly asking for thought and opinion because apparently it’s interesting to share.

Now, this may be thin ice on which I’m skating but surely the reader’s input is not valued above that of the writer? Sometimes, hearing feedback is great and incredibly beneficial. However, more often than not, intelligently well researched articles (Daily Mail, you can leave now) are littered with mindless comments from people who don’t actually care about the article, they just enjoy posting off the wall insults to anyone who is willing to give them the time.

Personally, I feel Twitter is a great for the Journalist, comment boxes just seem to cheaper and weaken the stories that are already sinking in the sands of the Internet.