Predictions for Journalism
Here are the trends I would like to profile:
Crowdsourcing the future of news: Melody Kramer asked her social media followers what they predicted for the coming year for journalism. She had three findings: new audio files, aggregation is more valuable to companies than content creation, and news sources will be less judgmental about how people get their information. While I can't say anything about audio files, I do agree with the other two predictions. You can see news stations getting more active on Twitter and other social media to accommodate their audience, and you see them giving out pieces of the story on social media to encourage people to find more information on their own if possible.
More is less (or too much): Lydia Polgreen talked about how journalists have moved away from lengthy, information heavy articles to shorter articles that get the main idea across with a few quotes. While I don't particularly love of hate this one, I have noticed this trend growing in popularity in my independent study. As editor in chief of CommTracks this year, I decided we needed a balance of words, photos, and design intricacy. As a result, we have cut our word count down to 500 words per article instead of the previous 750 word maximum. This "more is less" attitude will definitely affect how people read anything in the future. Anything longer than 500 words will start to exhaust people.
The year of yes: discusses the positive movements in media over the past year. After reading what Sue Schardt had to say, I couldn't agree more. Increased diversity and this being the "golden age of talent" allows people to demand better of their media, and forces media to change for them. Therefore, people see more of what they want in range, media, and quality. We will certainly be pleased with our news if this trend persists. I feel as though this trend is starting to pick up, though not as much as we would wish.