The Internet Becomes the Main Source of News

I attended the New Media vs. Traditional Journalism panel and learned some interesting things from Bob Benz and Bernard Debatin. Debatin spoke on advertising in the media. Advertising seems to be the one thing keeping print journalism floating in this country as we watch more and more long-time-running newspapers fail. I believe this is an interesting topic, but since there is not much evdience as to exactly how much readers are affected by the advertisements they see, it is hard to do much more reasearch on the topic. I do agree, however, that adversiting on the internet is much more effective because people can interact with the ads by clicking them for more (or even less) information, and some ads are hard to avoid altogether when they invade your computer screen.

The one idea that struck my fancy was the Ohio University graduate, whose name escapes me, who spoke on using Twitter and how his Twitter account would be the last thing he would ever want to have to give up. Bob Benz also mentioned how people like to read blogs more often, because they come from "normal, every day people." I think blogging is very important to often keeping newspaper websites alive by giving readers a more in-depth and personal story.

I would like to continue my research on the use of blogs on several newspaper websites, and their affects on the audience. I would like to speak on the positive and negative aspects of blogging, as well as how blogging is becoming professional journalism.

-Kristina Kercher