What is Journalism?

When I was younger, I was always under the impression that journalism was just writing news stories. Journalists would do research, talk to people, and type up a story. I don’t know why, but I thought that it was a fairly simple job. That was before I wrote up a story of my own, as a “journalist,” for a class last semester. I had do to a lot of my own research, make phone calls, and talk to people I didn’t know to get all of that facts straight for my story.

Journalism is so much more than telling the news and writing stories. Journalism is to search for information, and writing that information in a way that the public can understand. Journalists must collect unknown details, and put the facts together so normal citizens can comprehend what is going on in the world. I think journalists have an obligation to their readers, viewers, and listeners, to tell the truth and help them know what the real story is. People trust journalists. We develop relationships with the news writers we follow and believe them and what they write. Many people base their beliefs and ways of thinking on the writings of journalists, and in that way, journalism could be considered to be one of the foundational building blocks of the moral beliefs and culture of our society.