For the third module I decided to join the journalism group. I thought that it would be rewarding if I looked into the side of journalism that is more in touch with social media. Journalism has always been something that I wanted to venture into. I took a course my sophomore year at UMW titled Newsgathering. It was everything I thought it would be and more. I gained a lot of experience in going out and getting the story and how to format and write the story correctly. This experience helped me as a was a staff writer for the Blue and Gray Press. I was writing for the sports section of the paper. The editors had certain guidelines that we had to follow and one of them was that we needed to have at least three sources in each of our articles. This really pushed me to go out and do the face to face work pf interviewing. I really think that this opportunity gave me a lot of insight into what actually goes on in the field of journalism.

In this module, I decided to take on the task of looking into how social media has been adapted or acts as a supplement for journalism. What I learned was that journalists have, just like everyone else, made the swift transition to social media sites, such as twitter and facebook. There are numerous pages and accounts that post new stories and events every day. The one account that I looked at in particular was the twitter account for Adam Schefter. Schefter is a sports writer and a television analyst. I noticed by the way that people interact with him on twitter that he was very popular in the sports journalism world. I scrolled through his page seeing that he breaks a bunch of stories about hirings, firings, contract extensions and things of that sort. Another big outlet that I saw was podcasts. Along with a twitter page, NPR has a couple of different podcasts through which they release numerous amounts of stories. One reason why people are attracted to NPR is their credibility.

The final aspect that I focused on was sports talk shows. The show that I focused on was ESPN First Take. Basically, First Take is a talk show where two journalists and sports analysts, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, debate on the most current sports topics. The show airs at 9:00 AM in order for their viewers to get the news as soon as possible. I saw that not only do avid sports fans watch the show, but so do the athletes that are in the lime light. This show is a great example of how journalism has transitioned from the traditional pen and pad journalism to include the digital media. The thing that I have produced is also a sports talk show called The Breakdown with Blue and Big Dave, which I am a co-host of with my friend Isaac Blue. I have dedicated a whole blog post titled “Breakdown” for my show, so you can get the in-depth background of the show. All-in-all journalism has been my favorite module so far. It was interesting to study how journalism has moved from its roots in the traditional writing to adapt the social media outlets.