In a time before social media, news stations and articles were the focal point of information access among the general public. Now, information can be accessed by any strong-spoken individual with a stable internet connection (and even some who don’t). Of course, the World Wide Web isn’t an inherently bad resource for information. Unlimited access and the ability to cast one’s thoughts far and away have a lot of positives (but that is a topic for another article). What will be discussed here is the general downfall of education in organized journalism due to social media hindering the spread of information and lacking important credibility within its writing.

To examine this cultural shift, a good place to start would be the beginning of recognized and commonplace journalistic writing. Mass-published journaling is commonly believed to have started in either Strasbourg, Germany, in 1605 or shortly prior at Oxford University in England. Oxford Academic writes, “…around the year 1600 all the necessary technical, infrastructural and communication elements were already in place for the development of the modern newspaper [and therefore: journals] . . . The time was right for the first periodical news sheet, which appeared in Strassburg in 1605. The change from hand-copied to printed newspapers was of far-reaching significance (Weber).” This change from hand-copying to mass printing changed the journalistic world as we knew it. Much of the world’s accessible information went from being only available to those in the top percentiles of society to being much more accessible to those in the middle class and even a bit to those in the lower class and shadow country. It’s also important to note that hand-copied transcripts are more costly to produce and sell than those copied by machine. Overall, information shifted, for the first time, from a commodity to a public staple. 

With this shift in publication, it became easier to trust information printed with a printing press because of its mass production and, therefore, vetting. According to “Informit,” available through Google Scholar, the printing press was available starting in 1450 but later furthered in accessibility. “Many people attribute the invention of the printing press – with moveable metal type – to Johannes Gutenberg, a German, in the 1450s (Rose).” As writing continued, printed information became one of the most trustworthy sources of news and information for individuals in the public space. Newspapers, specifically the conglomeration of individually written articles about the ‘times,’ became a daily read for civilians. Early journalists were responsible for the information flow within society and could collapse an entire culture with one article via something as insubstantial as a single misplaced word. “Journalists can influence public perceptions (Covering Migrations).” For nearly 400 years, Journalists and writers – at times, regardless of credibility – could greatly influence society with their contributions. 

Understandably, this meant that for a long while, journaling and report-writing were thought of as influential professional skills, to the point of being mass formatted and taught within higher educational institutions. For most of the mid-late 1900s, a large percentage of high schools and undergraduate institutions had non-profit journalism clubs, with many individuals and former participants attributing part of their professional skill sets to these institutions. One participant asserted, “…involvement in high school journalism contributes to socialization into citizenship and, most crucially, to the development of a collective sensibility (Clark et al.).” This creates an obvious positive attribution towards journalism and its place in education. As time and technology progressed from the 1900s onwards, the landscape for teaching journalism changed drastically, primarily due to the influence of social media. Arguably, the teaching of journalism has stayed trapped in the past, almost irrelevant in the modern World. An article written about journalism in the changing landscape of public writing asserts this about its faltering education: “In debates surrounding the role of universities in teaching journalism, a range of critical voices have stressed the importance of moving beyond the limiting frame of an assumed ‘industry-academic dichotomy,’ while some also point to the structural forces that underpin the persistence of this frame” (Nolan). In short, public journals are being cut off by universities and, even worse, stripped of society. While completely unintentional, as schools are increasingly unable to keep up with rapidly changing cultural landscapes, it’s increasingly more apparent that journalism as a historical concept of publicisation of information lacks its original substance in the public eye. Another article about a similar issue reinforces the disconnect between schools and the modern media. Written about a study conducted about the current educational value of university-taught journalism in a modern world, expert findings conclude, “the current lack of interaction between universities and the media industry should give way to hybrid teaching models that include multidisciplinary applied research projects focused on the development of new formats, graphic languages, techniques, processes and prototypes of content production platforms (Machado et al.).”   journals are simply disconnected at the moment. In order to keep up with social media’s influence on information sharing in the modern world, a severe revamp is needed.

Journalism’s vast importance is undebatable, however, with social media allowing a platform for anyone to write a story about anything they want. This means, though, that major journals are debatably less important. Social media offers a platform to post relatively anything, and it will be accessible to anyone on the entire planet. Undoubtedly, anyone with an internet connection can easily write their journalistic ideas on some of the biggest informational platforms ever created. According to Google Statistics and Zapedia, “The internet has been one of our most transformative and fast-growing technologies. Globally, the number of internet users increased from only 413 million in 2000 to over 3.4 billion in 2016″ (Allen). Clearly, anything posted on the internet can be viewed daily by some of the largest audience sizes ever recorded. This offers a brand new landscape in which the world operates. Something invaluably grand can be offered to journalists through access to the internet. The issue with this, though, is that higher education schools are not taking great advantage of this new mode of access when instructing future journalists. While unfortunate, writers and experts have the capability to change the state of journalism as the world moves further and further into the technological world.

        Works Cited

Carey, James W. “A short history of journalism for journalists: A proposal and essay.” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, vol. 12, no. 1, 2007, pp. 3–16, https://doi.org/10.1177/1081180×06297603. 

Clark, Lynn, and Rachel Monaserrate. “High School Journalism and the Making of Young Citizens.” Sagepub, 10 May 2011, journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1464884910388225. 

Clayton, Ewan. “Where Did Writing Begin?” British Library, 2019, http://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/where-did-writing-begin. 

Machado, Elias, and Tattiana Teixeira. “Innovation as an Essential Part of Journalism Education in Contemporary Societies.” Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies, Intellect, 1 Mar. 2016, intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/ajms.5.1.103_1. 

Migration, Covering. “2.3 : What Power Do Journalists Have and How Does It Influence Their Work?” Covering Migration, 13 July 2020, coveringmigration.com/learning_pages/what-power-do-journalists-have-and-how-does-it-influence-their-work/#:~:text=Journalists%20have%20the%20power%20to%20influence%20public%20perceptions%2C,people%20to%20do%20or%20not%20to%20do%20something. 

Nolan, David. “Journalism, Education and the Formation of ‘Public Subjects.’” Sagepub, 1 Dec. 2008, journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1464884908096243. 

Rose, Stephanie. “Who Invented the Printing Press? | Agora – Informit.” Informit, 1 Jan. 2009, search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.036130312883670.

Weber, Johannes. “ Strassburg, 1605: The Origins of the Newspaper in Europe.” Gh.Oxfordjournals.Org, 30 Mar. 2012, gh.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/3/387.abstract.