Who Really Reports The News?

In today's changing media, who really reports the news? Every morning when we wake up, we are positive the paper will be on our doorsteps full of news. When we turn on the evening news, we are sure there will be something to report. Where does it really come from?

If newspapers were to die, how would it affect our media landscape? Would that change what our communities know and seek to find out everyday? What is taking up the slack for the decreasing number of people who get their news from TV, print, and radio?

According to journalism.org and the Pew Research Center's project for excellence in Journalism, the answer is a moving target. Actually the tracking and the pursuit are nearly impossible. Newspapers are still the overwhelming choice as a traditional media vehicle inwhich audiences are getting their news. The study shows that eight out of ten news stories are repackaged or repeated from previously published information. Of the stories that were new, 95% came from traditional media.

Some of the findings include:

1. Of the 53 different news outlets, 12 did not produce any new or local content.

2. Of the six major new threads studied, only 17% actually contained new news content.

3. General interest newspapers only produced half of that.

4. Almost half of the newspaper stories studied were online rather than print.

5. 63% of new stories were initiated by the government officials.

Of the media vehicles, TV news was the most locally focused, and 80% of straight news accounts were written by local staffers.

What does all of this mean? When we look to our papers, TV news anchors and radio personalities, we assume they are reporting the news first. As time passes, it seems like every bit of "news" we absorb, isn't really "new" after all.

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Google Wave

Technology is evolving everyday and that is why the way reporters gather information has to evolve as well. A plausible way to do this is to use Google Wave. It is a blog site that many of the top and most current reporters use and is a great way of scoring information.

Wave helps build relationships between reporters and common people and allows everyone, through blog, to keep up with the most current information. It allows reporters to find people who are highly educated on the exact topics they are researching and it is a blog site so it is much more effective than tweeting to get information due to the depth of the others responses.

Being apart of a blog on Wave is much different than the traditional one-on-one interview system of old. The blogs allow credible sources to post what they know quickly and efficiently and that allows other reporters to feed off what they find out. This helps shape the posts of the other sources you are receiving and helps form a new and efficient way to get credible sources.

Many criticize Wave because anyone can post and the inaccuracy of normal people may not hold up to that of professional reporters. No one knows if Wave will stand the test of time but it is a new and efficient way of getting sources and information.

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