Journalism and Social Media

Journalism has changed vastly over the course of the last decade, from the involvement of media to the new styles of presenting information. I felt the video on social media was very supplementary to the article's claims. James Bennet, the author of the article, does a great job of arguing that articles should not be written in a "long-form" manner, in other words that articles should be as basic and as to the point as possible. The only issue I see with the logic of Mr. Bennet is that he mentions a wide range of titles (short novels/articles) but bases his ideas around the concept that if a novel or literary piece is successful it is therefore "good". There is a portion of the article that strikes me as bothersome, he uses the writing of an Iraq war veteran (who is probable just not into using big words and "beating around the bush" to parallel his ideas of writing shorter pieces "But I defy you to find a wasted word among the 22,000 that Mockenhaupt assembled" (Bennet 1). He glorifies a work that doesn't require that many words. Personally I feel that if a piece is longer it doesn't mean it will be better but it does mean that someone has put more thought into it, and is more passionate about it. This is the first generation of  digital  articles and the massive information overload, so "compressing" is going to be difficult and that is something that Mr. Bennet will have to bite.
The video is the savior is all of this, there was a rhythm in the article that suggested the author was pissed and it came off as an aggressive article, it wasn't even directed at me but I felt like I was about to get punched in the face or flipped off the whole time while I was reading it. The video started playing and it was the side of the article that I was blinded too while reading. How is Social media changing Journalism is awesome because it was A. 2 minutes and B. It was professionals, editors, writers and a single question "How Is Social Media Changing Journalism". The video does a great job putting a face to the views of editors and writers that may see the boom in social media as a problem or a catalyst for online electronic journalism. I liked hearing the response from different angles, the PBS president said "it could be good or bad" so the video deals with the more neutral position rather than dead set against long form journalism.