Print is dead. We’ve
been hearing this for years, but the newspaper industry is putting up a good
fight. Not many are surprised by the fact that the print newspaper industry is
in structural decline. Similar to the 6’oclock evening news, why wait until the
end of your day to receive your news? We can use the internet to access news 24
hours a day, this way you get your daily dose of news whenever and wherever you
like.
Besides the obvious
convenience of digital journalism, we can also receive more information than
ever before. Whenever you read an article or news piece online, there are
dozens of relating links on the page, just a click away.
#Hashtags are nothing
new. But this year, I’ve stopped hash-tagging #LikeForLike and learned how I
can use hashtags to further my career as a journalist.
Hashtags help
journalists find people posting about topics they are reporting on. This is
especially helpful during the interview process. Whenever you attach a hashtag to a tweet,
Facebook post or even Instagram photo, it is immediately indexed by the social
network and searchable by other users. People with shared interests will use
regular hashtags to help others find related tweets.
For example, my
hometown has been hit with 2 winter snow storms in the past 48 hours. If I was
looking to talk to people affected by these storms, I would go on twitter and
look up the hashtag #NLWeather.
Hashtags have the
potential to be extremely valuable, when used the right way. Over hash-tagging
can distract users from the main message of the post, and can also make the
post look like spam.
Remember - Less is more!