Introduction

Many (most, really) of the elements of journalism you just read about in the last three chapters are still really useful parts of the profession. At the same time, just by adding "digital," we are forced to address the elephant in the room: Journalism done in the traditional way is good, important, expensive, and does not always get the audience it deserves. We live in a media system where attention is the key resource. Attention leads to revenue and revenue almost always fuels journalism in the United States.

Imagine this: There is a flash flood in your town.

The local news website sends a reporter near the scene and she spends four to five hours working on a story, going through all of the steps we just read about in the last three chapters, as well as taking videos, posting them on social media site, and once she is done with the reporting and writing process, she posts a news story ... and between the social media and website coverage, her work gets 20,000 views. Not terrible at all.

Now imagine if someone spends less than five minutes uploading an Instagram post about the flood (perhaps someone who had to evacuate their home) and 10,000 people see it. Surely, what the professional reporter has developed is deeper and broader, filled more context, and ultimately more useful for a fully engaged consumer. On the other hand, the Instagram post is more immediate, perhaps more timely, creates an emotional experience of almost "being there." This is the world in which we live—we are trying to compare apples and oranges, because digital attention often cares less about the label and more about the immediate experience of consuming the information.

Both are important, but one is much more expensive to produce, the journalists', and the work is a pathway to a career because they go everywhere news is happening.

Depending on how large the staff is for that local news website, the reporter could be doing multiple tasks at the same time: regularly posting live updates from officials and eyewitnesses on both the website and social media channels, taking photos and videos for the same platforms, getting to the bottom of rumors and false reports to clarify what is true, interviewing people to find compelling stories to tell both in real-time and after the fact, writing an evolving news article that is based on time now, but will be reworked in inverted pyramid style later.

Digital journalism looks traditional in many ways, but it is faster, juggles more skills, and it will show up on a variety of channels to help consumers understand what is happening. If you want to learn how to communicate is multiple ways, for multiple reasons, and never want two days to look the same, modern journalism might be for you.

For this week's chapter, you are going to do some of your own digital research. First, we are going to look at a modern newsroom close to where this book is being remixed, The Kansas City Star. Then we are going to look at a guide for career seekers and see what it has to say about journalism today. We are going to explore the many roles of the newspaper.

The Kansas City Star Staff Listings

The Kansas City Star has been published since 1880, and has had a long, rich, and impressive history, but the last 20 years have been some of its most tumultuous. The Internet slowly eroded many of the key revenue sources of the paper, even as it gained readership online. Still, the journalists who covered the city with much larger staffs continued to produce important work throughout the massive changes in the newsroom. Now, The Star has blended many of the time-proven roles with new job types to address the changing needs from a print-only daily publication to a multi-media website expected to cover news 24 hours a day.

'News Analysts, Reporters, and Journalists'

O*Net is a tool to help people explore potential careers. Years ago, if you wanted to learn more about being a journalist, O*Net would have like sent you to a page called, "Reporters and Correspondents." Today, you will find a page called "News Analysts, Reporters, and Journalists." This is a much broader set of terms. Why do you think that is? The probability is high that digital life has changed journalism jobs in permanent and significant ways, just like we discussed in the introduction.

The O*Net offers this general description of what you might do as a journalist:

Narrate or write news stories, reviews, or commentary for print, broadcast, or other communications media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, or television. May collect and analyze information through interview, investigation, or observation.

We are going to explore the many different types of tasks, skills, opportunities, interests, values, and more than come with the field through the O*Net