What is News?

I am a news junkie.

 

I love the news.

 

When I was deciding my major for college, I decided I wanted to be Stone Phillips. Remember him from Dateline? I went to school to be a broadcast journalist, but ended up switching my major to advertising. I am glad I did, as I love my profession, but I still love the news.

 

The way I gather the news has changed since then. It used to be primarily through TV. Occasionally I’d read the newspaper, but I would hate to miss my news shows, such as Good Morning America. I would even listen to the news in my car on the way to work – remember when we could hear WOWT over the radio before everything switched to digital? Am I dating myself?

 

Now I hear first about breaking news stories online — many through social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. With the changes in news distribution, I found this research interesting from PRSA’s publication Public Relations Tactics.

 

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found:

Are journalists are getting the facts wrong? Or could it be that we have adopted a new cultural definition of “news”? Anyone with access to social media or the Internet is a “journalist” these days and information spreads like wildfire. Often — like the game of telephone I used to play as a kid before I wanted to become Stone Phillips — by the time we hear the “news,” it’s been misquoted, mistyped and misspoke into a version no longer containing the facts.