The Future of News Media

by Julian Brastow

In the modern world, media is a very large part of many people’s lives. Trends in media are constantly changing, especially news, and mediums like television channels are always looking for ways to make their broadcasts more appealing and in touch with the modern viewer. Our recent visit to ABC Channel 7 News revealed these changes in action.

My first impressions of the newsroom were about what I expected, but this did not stop me from being very impressed with all the steps and tasks of creating a successful newscast. The tasks ranged from scrolling the teleprompter to controlling which section would come on the screen next. We met the news anchors and were introduced to the people that find news to use in the broadcast. There were police scanners running and we were told about a fire that had happened that morning. The part of the tour that impressed me the most, though, was the control room. From here we watched the eleven o'clock news, and through watching it I witnessed one person that was in charge of, among other things, giving queues to people that were about to come on screen, controlling the levels of sound, and manually controlling which section of the broadcast would come on next. I later learned that this person’s job used to be the job of five different people, and I was extremely impressed with how relaxed and skilled he was during what would seem like a very stressful task.

As I viewed the newscast, I also witnessed how social media was integrated into the routine. There were often tweets from the public on the screen which showed their opinions on different issues. These new parts of news media, from the on-screen tweets to the ability to do a five person job with just one, are all evidence that media is continuously evolving in order to meet the needs of the modern world.