Discussing the Press Sphere

In his article “The Press Becomes the Press Sphere” Jeff Jarvis writes about how we perceive and use the press is changing. In earlier times, the press was our direct link to the world. All news that we received was reported and edited by the press and distributed in the form of newspapers. Now, times have changed and so has the press. Instead of just one means of getting the news, we have numerous ways. These include the media, your peers, the government, private companies, work, and of course the press. Rather than use just one medium we can link across many different mediums to follow a piece of news. This new system of getting the news has changed a lot of things about the news that we get for better or for worse. Rather than reading edited information written by a professional writer, we read a Tweet from a friend or a blog from someone who has a strong opinion about what’s going on in the world. Jarvis also explains how the final product has changed. Rather than using a process to achieve a product, the service is the product.

There was not a lot in this reading that confused me. I think that a lot of the points that Jarvis was making made sense. I do see a change in how we get the news even from when I was little. Rather than getting the news solely from the newspaper or the television, you can receive news from tons of different sources. I think that this is especially true in college where the more traditional forms of the press are more difficult to come by. I always seem to get my news from the internet or from my friends. The next place I go is to the more “press-based” forms of news like the newspaper to verify a story or to get more details on a story. I think that this does lose some of the elegance of the press. However, it does add a whole new dimension to the news where you are able to interact with other people such as witnesses and the people reporting the news. I think that we still cannot determine how this will affect how we receive the news in the future.