New Technologies May Be Changing Journalism — But Will They Also Make It Easier to Participate?
Now that enormous quantities of raw information are available to anyone with a computer and a phone line, questions arise not only about the role of journalists and journalism educators, but also about whether people of color will be an integral part of the information superhighway.
At the recently concluded National Association of Hispanic journalist’s (NAHJ) Conference in Chicago, the focus was on new technologies and their impact on the journalism profession. The conference was titled: “Welcome, Move Ahead. The Future is Here.” Its focus was on the need for journalists “to be fluent in yet another language, the language of computers.”
Said an organizer, “More and more media companies continue to venture into new [areas]. Newspapers, television networks and radio networks are unveiling Web pages faster than you can say Internet …. On-line, digital, World Wide Web and cyberspace are fast becoming media industry buzzwords.”
