One thing I have noticed through internships and my experience as the copy chief at our student newspaper is the how the duties of a copy editor are bridging more and more into the online world. How can I as a copy editor better prepare myself for this reality? I wonder how prepared anyone can be for the World Wide Web considering it changes many times within just one day.

The issue of job security is the first issue that comes to mind when I think of ‘professional’ bloggers. Are there specific stipulations written into their contract saying what they can and can’t do and what determines termination? But if this is the case, how can they really be writing on what they want?

Also, how can you be sure that what the blogger is writing is their opinion and not the opinion of the company or newspaper that they are writing for? Is it a personal bias or a professional one? Is the writing fact or fiction? What is the basis of its slant? There is also the question of whether you are reading a personal commentary or a professional piece of writing. Is what is being written the ramblings of an employee or is it actually a journalistic endeavor to inform the reader.

I think that while blogs are an interesting and sometimes informative piece of reading. I don’t think that they are the “next generation” of newspapers or journalists. Just because you are a blogger does not make you a journalist, although it could be something that is done on the side, as with the columnists at Moor’s newspaper. While I do think that blogs will become a part of newspapers, I don’t believe that it will only be done by reporters. I think that there will be blogs of politicians, athletes, celebrities and maybe of ordinary citizens as extras to the newspaper’s subject content.

I, too, am a soon-to-be journalism grad with no online experience. But for some reason, I’m not panicking. I guess I figure that my youth alone will make people assume I “know” computers! Seriously, though, there are always ways to learn, and Moor pointed out that basic journalism skills are still the most important thing.

Online journalism is a wonderful medium because it lacks limitations; one isn’t hindered by word count, space or color/b&w. But online journalists need to be aware of how their readers differ from print readers. Online reading habits are quite different considering the availability and manueverability of a computer. Online readers tend to skim more often and tend to demand more interesting, short material with as much visuals as possible. With this in mind, I agree with another reader’s comments that online and print should supplement each other, instead of battling over supremacy and/or future longevity.

I will be graduating in June with barely any experience in the online journalism world. That scares me because I feel like employers will be looking at fresh journalists, expecting them to have that cutting edge in the online world. I am not excited about the decline in print media. I am excited about the possibilities of using the internet as a companion to print mediums.