Week8- We the Media

Chapter 1 “From Tom Paine to Blogs and Beyond”, Gillmor introduces the evolution of journalism chronologically. At first, Gillmor pointed out that telegraph is a revolutionary tool in 1844 and it could gather news of distant events. Later, Broadcasting has played a key role. Radio and TV attracted readers and advertisers away from newspaper in 1960s-1970s. Cable’s advent was bringing more choices for audiences and Internet also provides people to get information easily. Nowadays, whether on the radio or Internet, “Conversation” is the most important feature. For example, the modern talk radio has allowed audiences to participate. In the blogosphere, people can choose some specific issues they interested in to respond with their opinions.


Because of the change of technologies, communications in journalism had completed a transformation from point-to-point communication, like telegraph and telephone, one-to-many communication in our current age, such as television, broadcasting, and even many-to-many medium, such as blogs, wiki. After reading this chapter, I came to realize what is Big Media and know the way of communication and journalism revolutions itself were modified by the need of society and technology. Also, millions of people have begun to use blogs to obtain updated information and news and many journalism businesses have created their blogs as a publishing tool to announce news.


In this age of information, anyone can be a journalist. Thanks for Internet, big media companies no loner monopolize news. Grassroots journalists can own the right of service. The emerging of PC or laptop, Mobile, and digital camera possibly makes audiences to become true recorders. They change the form of news. For example, we can publish news or express our commentary on our blogs, which work in something close to real time and capture all over the world. As far as I’m concerned, it is worth noticing- how to report real events and prevent ourselves to spread rumors. That’s important to a responsible reporter!!!


Another thing I’m interested in is the reasons that blogs become a significant journalism tool. I think there are some factors:
1. Easy to use: setting up a blog needs a few minutes without special skills or knowledge. In, addition, publishing a blog is extremely easy. You just click the link to the” publish” button, enter a title, type some words. It’s easy and good for everyone to report news.
2. Cost less: you should not pay for setting up a blog. Some companies provide blog’s space for everyone to use.
3. Multi-way communication: in the blogosphere, we can discuss some issue with different people. Also, you can link other attractive blogs from a original blog.
4. Blog contents can be retrieved from word documents, pictures, and even videos. Audiences can understand an event more by watching real a documentary film.