By Ameara Ditsche
Staff Writer
Let’s face it, 2018 has been long. There were events that happened just earlier this year that feel like they happened many years ago. Our increments of time are getting smaller and smaller as the speed of media consumption increases. We no longer rely on traditional news sources for all of our information.
Now, we have witnesses live-tweeting these events. Or newspapers/magazines that have online publications, breaking a story much more quickly. This evolution allows us to forget events much more quickly, since the next one is being fed to us so soon.
2018 has been Donald Trump’s second year in office. His presidency divided the nation and brought politics to the forefront of the American limelight. Before the Trump era, many citizens didn’t bother to keep up with politics. They had a trust in the administration that mad the media’s job as a watchdog seem unnecessary.
The media often is responsible for bridging the gap between citizens and government officials. This is very important in today’s political climate when a bulk of citizen’s do not trust the president and his appointees.
Possibly one of the biggest events to shake the Journalism community was the death of Jamal Khashoggi, who was an American Journalist working in Saudi Arabia. He went missing, was declared killed and eventually it was discovered he was murdered by Saudi officials. It was kept under wraps at first but the U.S. pointed out loopholes in the story that led to the discovery of his murder.
This also ignited an appreciation for the media in America. People started to understand some of the dangers that come with being a journalist.
In the last few years, America has had an epidemic of school shootings. We are almost desensitized to the all too familiar feeling of turning on the news and learning that another group of children have been victimized. With the youth becoming not only more politically efficate, but aware of what’s going on around them due to new methods of media consumptions, along came a new movement.
Social media allowed youth with this same passion to connect and online news allowed them to learn of these tragic events and their aftermath in real time. For children who were in school everyday, afraid if they’d make it home.
Quotes in newspapers promising “thoughts and prayers” were not enough. Protests were organized all over the country and we used social media as our own reporting platform to plan it. Which resulted in one of the largest peaceful protests in U.S history.
The traditional media came into play in a reversed role. Instead of reporting on officials and scaring citizens, they reported on citizens to scare off claas into change.
Another defining event of 2018 was the #MeToo movement which spawned from article in the New Yorker and The New York Times. The two publications were the first to report on Harvey Weinstein and his history of sexual harassment, adding yet another predator to Hollywood. They won a Pulitzer Prize for this and sparked a large social movement that hadn’t been attributed to a newspaper in over a decade.
Here, we again see the evolution of media consumption and how it is changing and growing, with participants constantly learning from traditional media sources.
2018 was a whirlwind, it was eventful and monumental. Records were broken and the world is changed, rattled and flipped upside down. The only reason we are so aware of these events is because of journalism. Even if orthodox print media is fading, it is the art of sharing knowledge and honestly repeating events that is the thread holding our society together.
This past year has been a mess for the world as a whole and it is hard to keep track of. In 10 years it will be a haze, but thanks to Journalism it will all be archives for us to relive and learn from.
