New era journalism

Jill Walker Rettberg’s passage from her book on page 98, Blogging-Digital Media and Society Series (2008) states, “These words are moving precisely because their author  is a participant in the events, and because they are so immediate: we can read them seconds after the blogger typed them and pressed the ‘post’ button.”  It is true that most of us have twitters, facebook, and myspace accounts.  What fascinates us about these social networks is because we can update our statues conveniently and look up other people’s statues to see what they are up to.  Rettberg’s passage makes a lot of sense.  Rettberg gave an example about a student who was on campus during the Virginia Tech shootings on April 16^th, 2007 who was updating his Livejournal diary throughout the morning.  His post stated, “The first shooting took place at around 7am I went to class at 9am.  They didn’t close campus until 10am.” Following, “Just like that.  We topped Columbine.” And finally, “Please God, have none of them be my friends. Please.” We, as an audience or a “follower” are captivated by these posts because this student is involved with the shooting by being on campus and witnessing it as he is updating his Livejournal diary.  I admit, I am very much intrigued with what my friends are doing, so I check my facebook live feed. Blogging, or even just simply interacting with others with the internet has traditional journalism in a hurry to catch up to a new generation journalism.  

Signing off with love,

Stephanie