Assignment #8

Scott Baradell's presentation made me excited about journalism for the first time in a long time. After my experience with 2320 last semester, with its veritable funeral dirge of current and former print journalists, I was pretty depressed about the future of my chosen career path. Bleak bleak bleak was the outlook, but now I'm a bit more hopeful.

While I still have a long way to go to becoming a modern journalist (mainly in the realms of video shooting and editing), I feel a bit more confident since I'm comfortable blogging and using Web sites such as Twitter. Many of the users I follow on Twitter are businesses (mostly magazines--i.e. Rolling Stone, and news outlets--i.e. Pegasus and the DMN), and "tweeting" seems to be a skill many publications will look for in the near future.

Baradell's presentation was informative, engaging and insightful. I was afraid that as a PR professional, his time would focus mainly on that topic, but he stayed mostly on journalism as we know it, fielding most of the group's questions. His grasp of new media was vast and I always appreciate it when adult lecturers don't talk to my generation like morons, especially when talking about technology.

I enjoyed this lecture and feel excited about being hopeful about my future vocation.