Semantics

  As I sit here at my desk to reflect on the second lecture of JOUR1111 I can't help but feel slightly weird about writing about something I didn't actually go to. If you have read my previous post you'll know that I can't attend either of the lectures because of clashes with other classes. But anyway, here we go!

The first thing I got from this lecture was... everyone got jellybabies?! What is this madness! I want jellybabies! Is this what all first years get now? I didn't get that sort of treatment last year... I should probably tell you that I am a second year journalism/psychology student. This is so not fair. But moving on. The title of this week's lecture is "New News". I don't think I've never really given much thought about news being either new or old but it all seems pretty straightforward. Old news is newspapers and such and new news is technology. I suppose it's because I take news for granted, much like everyone else in my generation. If I want to know something, all I have to do is type it into my iPhone, iPad or laptop or turn on a TV. With one click of a button, I have every piece of information I could possibly need on a subject.

With all this new media fast outgrowing old media, I believe, to some extent, that some aspects of journalism (ie. newspapers) have a very real chance of dying out. But in terms of what people would pay for online, newspapers come in at the lowest percentage with only 14% of people saying that they would pay for online news. Does this mean that physical newspapers still have a chance of survival? Or are they doomed even more so?

The internet will forever continue to grow. I think we all know that. Web 1.0 (companies and advertising) has come and gone, we've all seen the effects of web 2.0 (the social web) and how it uses social media to target and build a profile on specific people in order to advertise effectively. And now we are facing web 3.0 - the semantic web. What does that mean? Well, my good friends, it means exactly what I just wrote. Semantics is meaning. It is the study of what things mean.Sigh. Isn't that what life is all about?

But overall, could this be the end of journalism? The death of journalism? DUN DUN DUNNNN. With all this new technology, will newspapers, books and basically anything that can have an electronic copy, die out? Will all future generations learn to read off a tablet or a laptop? Maybe everyone in the future will need glasses by default. Imagine that you're reading a book and you are at a cliffhanger and are about to turn the page - what if you were reading it on a tablet? What if the battery died or the screen froze? How would you survive?? I know I probably wouldn't. But I really don't think that this will all be the death of journalism as a whole. Maybe for some aspects of it, like newspapers, yes, but as a whole, definitely not. People want to watch TV, they want to look things up, they want news. So as long as journalists are supplying them with it, I think we're safe. As Dumbledore said, "Death is but the next great adventure." So we'll see what happens.