As famed journalist A.J. Liebling once wrote, “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.” When Liebling wrote this in the mid-twentieth century, there is no way he could conceive of how the news industry would change. With the end of the 1980s, household computers started to become all the rage, the World Wide Web was invented and Microsoft was gaining dominance. By the end of the next decade, however, dot-coms were all the rage, Google was still in its infancy, and the Web Log, or blog for short, was the newest medium for private communication. Now, almost 20 years after the advent of the World Wide Web, citizen journalism is gaining a strong foothold. Fueled by blogs and driven by citizens, either professionally trained or not, who want to not only report the news, but also comment on it.
This is where I come in.
As a senior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst pursuing a double major in Journalism and Communication, I have been primarily trained in the art of print journalism. I’ve held an internship at a newspaper and was an editor at the Daily Collegian. Unfortunately, the newspaper business seems more and more antiquated as every day passes. I hope to use the Web to help develop my writing and analyzing skills, while leaning how to incorporate blogging and all other aspects of Web 2.0 into my craft. By learning these skills, I can confidently plan for the future of the industry and not be left behind in the next great online adventure in news coverage.
My name is David Humphreys and this is my first blog…
Dave, I have just finished reading your blogs…. these are very informative, and interesting. I really enjoyed them.