Monday, March 9, 2009

It's a crazy time to be at the University of Illinois. Unofficial. Massive power outages. Placentas in the water system. The kid elected to be student trustee is being stripped of the title. The controversial figure Bill Ayers is a guest-in-residence at Allen Hall. Each are newsworthy in their own way. The power outage is the one that really made me think.

I was stuck in my room with no internet. As someone who has the internet categorized as an absolute survival necessity, I was pretty lost without my computer. Fortunately, I could get twitter on my cellphone. It was at that moment that I had wished that I would have been following the Daily Illini.

Twitter, to anyone that doesn't know, is a social networking site where people can post status updates, not unlike the status feature on facebook. The more I think about it now, the more I realize how suitable it is for reporting breaking news stories. As every new sliver of information becomes available, it can be posted to the web. It allows for a new, interesting way for a story to unfold.

It will be interesting to see how the media is going to change in the future. I wonder if one day, written word as a medium will become obsolete. What will happen if one day the news is only presented through motion picture and audio? With the rate of technology soaring, one can never know.

A journalist should always be prepared.

2 comments:

  1. The placenta story was the weirdest thing I've heard about here in awhile! Ugh.

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  2. When news breaks, we want info fast. Battery-power is important, too. Even the poor of the world have cell phones. The text message may be the most reliable means of delivery when the story affects power and distribution. Now, who will write the texts?

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