Journalism, as it was paradigmatically conceived a few decades ago, is in a process of reinvention to adapt to new ways of reaching audiences through the electronic media of the internet.
The vicissitudes that a journalist faces on a day-to-day basis, such as having to adjust to the editorial lines of the medium in which he works, having to pass the topics of his articles and writings for approval at the discretion of the boss in turn, comply with the news “quota”, having to report what is “not news”, but which serves to fill the spaces, having to prepare commissioned reports to repair or create a specific image of someone or something, or adjusting to the agenda that third parties established about what to talk about or what not to talk about, new problems, greater challenges and also opportunities are added.
New problems when finding that his profession must now find a way to reach new generations of audiences, who by tendency are abandoning traditional media. Little by little, readers of printed media and television journalism viewers are becoming extinct, being replaced by new generations for whom magazines and newspapers are little-known and less well-attended objects, new generations who do not get used to it (fortunately) to the passive role of being mere television viewers, a new and dangerous problem, but also an exciting challenge for the journalist.
Publishing on the Internet sometimes implies facing directly, without a protection network, the automatic rights of reply, reproaches and even threats.Now, in addition to the previous ones, the new challenges of learning to handle new technologies and knowing how to use analysis metrics of visits to the published article or the newly fed blog, problems in learning to write content with styles more suitable for new devices are added. mobile electronics, to try to understand the gregarious ties between target audiences and to face the competition of multiple reading options on the internet, which offers an infinite number of sources for the new generations, and suddenly find themselves in competition for the fight to get more readers not only with colleagues from other latitudes, but also with "emerging" journalists who, without a traditional means of communication as backing, according to the magnitude of their talent or the popularity of the "trending topic" they handle,Overnight they can become new opinion leaders and gain followers.
The opportunities that come with these changes are also interesting, when facing the traditional journalist in a new electronic context, where suddenly individual talent can find spaces of freedom, to do more investigative journalism, to move in an electronic arena where You can create your own spaces, and try to avoid the yoke of the traditional institutional “Portero” that all traditional media has and that decides what is published and what is not.
In summary, the new generational trends and technology force us to reinvent the profession of journalism, making it more complicated but also more interesting, allowing journalists to exercise their work more freely, more attached to their convictions or particular perceptions, and to obtain more objective signs of the degree of personal influence they may have on a certain segment of readers.
