Surely I wasn’t the only aspiring writer who firmly believed the Internet was going to kill journalism? That the Internet’s bloody hands were choking the life out of traditional newspapers? My family would say to me around Christmas time, Thanksgiving or any such holiday, not to go into journalism because it is a dying field. No one reads anymore.
It’s just not true that no one reads anymore. They have just changed the way in which they read. Working for a small town weekly newspaper, there is no shortage of people filing into the office to tell us how much they love our paper. We cover what the Register Guard and Corvallis Gazette Times won’t. Local sports, local businesses, local people. I just did a story on a woman suffering from Mantle Cell Lymphoma. She has been a Junction City resident her whole life and now the community is pulling together to raise money for her stem cell transplant in a few months. Those are the stories the people in the Tri-County area love to read about. So they buy our paper and look forward to it every week.
Our publisher, Steve Rowland, refuses to put our paper on the Internet – he says that will kill the business and we will be giving away the news for free. He could be right, but lots of people out in this farm country don’t have access to the Internet at home, so they would still rely on a traditional newspaper delivered to their front door every Wednesday. In many ways I agree with Steve. Why bother going on the internet? Well, what about those people living in Salem, or Idaho, or Washington, who grew up in Monroe or Harrisburg and would like to read some local news? How convenient for them to read it online.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that the Internet has a purpose when it comes to journalism and I am only recently starting to see it. Where before I used to think reading through a computer screen would distance the writer from the readers, I learned from the readings this week how a blog actually brings them closer. They can ask questions, leave comments and have a conversation – something hardly doable with a print newspaper unless you write a letter to the editor. And even then, you aren’t getting to talk to the writer directly. Blogs can zero in on niche reporting in ways newspapers can’t. The people who care about that subject, area or topic of interest are the ones who will read your blog. As a writer, I know the people interested in what I’m doing are the ones I want reading my work.
I’m slightly embarrassed that I’m a senior in college and I have never kept a blog. I have resisted the change just like many dying newspapers. Now, by keeping a blog I can focus on the news I am interested in, facilitate conversations with my readers and do what’s most important to me: write.
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