Okay. So my title seems a bit strange for a journalism major. After all, isn't journalism all about news and writing it? I've been mulling over this for the past few days and have decided I'm not sure that our culture has a proper definition of news.
I just looked up "news" on my handy mac dictionary and here's how it defined news: "newly received or noteworthy information, esp. about recent or important events."
In turn, I tend to think of news as the most recent status update on facebook or the latest gossip about Kate-plus-8-minus-John. In my generation, we have a startling tendency to be unaware to anything but that which entertains us. As a result, our mind narrows.
For instance, I've heard my friends and myself log onto facebook and question, "I wonder what's going on in the world today." Wouldn't that be a more pertinent question to ask the New York Times or the Washington Post? Or when we want to learn more about something outside of our immediate circle, we'll catch up on the latest issue of People and find out about the next Twilight, High School Musical, or Harry Potter bit of gossip.
This constant connectivity seems to have done nothing but make our world smaller. With everything at our fingertips, we no longer have a need to be informed. It's a concerning trend, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the next 5 years or so.
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