Thursday, 14 August 2014

ARE JOURNALIST STILL RELEVANT IN THIS SOCIAL MEDIA AGE?

Journalist relevance in this day and age

The answer to that question ladies and gentlemen is yes we still need journalists in this social media age. Journalists play a huge role in informing the world about what is going on around us. They gather and present information that is not available to average people around the world using the media including print media (newspapers and magazines) broadcast (radio and television) and the internet. If journalist were  to be viewed irrelevant there would be a huge breakdown in the media. Newspapers. magazines, radio and television with face number of problems.

                                                        Source: http://jivecommunications.ca/benefits/traditionalmedia

Whereas  social media is a platform to give share our personal opinions about what we hear and  see  through the media. These would include the Oscar Pistorius case, Etolls and the Bring Back Our Girls Campaign, which were all revealed to the public through a journalist. As relevant and as much as the social  media is slowly taking over you should remember that social media is not available a lot of people and you should also remember that if journalist were to be seen as irrelevant there would be a huge gap left. Social media would fail to fill this gap.

Imagine journalist being seen as irrelevant . How would print media and broadcast media survive? How would public relations practitioners survive considering that Public Relations Practitioners and journalist work hand in hand? For a public relations practitioner this would lead to a crisis. No press releases, no press kits, no media releases and definitely no interviews from journalists. All a public relations practitioner is going to have is social media platform that is not fully capable of satisfying the needs of a Public Relations practitioner.



Now let me hear your opinions about social media and journalism.
Are Social Media platforms more relevant than journalist?
Are journalist still as relevant as they were before the existence of social media?
How important are journalist to a public relations practitioner?




                                                                                                                                                      source: conversationprism.com

20 comments:

  1. I agree with what you are saying. The relevnce of journos can never be disputed. There might be a decrease in sales of print media but the rise in instant news coverage. We are now able to access live feeds from a e.g a courtroom through sites like Twitter, FB and not forgeting News24. So in a nutshell journos journalism is timeless for as long as we read and watch news.

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  2. So true and ruling them out would also mean no online news.

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  3. If this question was addressed to me I would tackle it with a YES we do need journalists at this age.

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  4. This is so true. As much as anyone, anywhere can break the news, we still need journalists to write down the actual events in a style that we can all understand.

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    1. You are right considering that a lot of news on social media are sometimes clouded with peoples opinions

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  5. Journalist are still required in the social media era because they play a crucial role in research that has to be published on social media.

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    1. True, And without them some of this information wouldn't be available on social media.

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  6. I agree with you, journalist are still needed. Stories are everywhere even though papers don't really sell much these days.

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    1. Yeah, as much as they don't sell they still present concrete information with all the facts of the news.

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  7. I agree with you journalists are relevant to give us researched and some times credible news because if we only relied on social media with most of its content based on hear say or not so credible resources we would be living in a chaotic society filled with rumours.

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    1. Yeah, they are source of news here and should be the main source for anu nes.

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  8. No they are not.they are relevant to those who use them for agenda setting...not us the audience

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    1. I totally disagree. Take journalists away from all medias including social media. You would be left with nothing but a number of news stories based on hear say.

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  9. I think people still buy your newspapers and magazines for accuracy purposes because we cannot really believe everything we hear on social media

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    1. True, Some news on social media are clouded with opinons instead if facts.

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  10. I strongly agree with you, journalists are still relevant... we need them to tell us what is happening. Their credibility makes it possible for us to believe in a story that what an ordinary person would say on a certain social media platform.

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  11. We do still need journalists in this day. They are more credible than ordinary people. They confirm what's true and what's not

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  12. I strongly agree with you, everyone and anyone can be a journalist this days because we all exposed to social media once we hear news we all want to post news that are relevant and we all credible citizens.

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  13. I strongly agree with you we still need journalist in this day of age but these days people use social media to get current news thank you for the advice

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