Journalism and its challenges

Journalism has had always some challenges to face, especially the Chilean one, which has not actually looked for real solutions, so problems keep with people related to the media.

Technology, for example, is an issue which journalists are closely involved in. Many digital media have arrived to stay (because of the Internet), and it's absolutely important that journalists know how to correctly use the technological tools they have to develop their professional work. However, that mostly doesn't happen in the Chilean context.

Many journalists got a lot of teaching to write for press, you know, for a daily neswpaper or a monthly magazine, but not for those digital media which must inform to people every single minute it passes, because the main feature of the digital media is their immediacy, so these media must be updated frequently, and it's real important to know how to use the tools technology offers to the communication professionals, so they can professionally develop their work.

The important thing here is the teaching the universities give to their students. The schools of Journalism and their teaching should work according to the new tools, so the journalists skills would be up-to-date and they wouldn't have major problems or difficulties while working on a digital media.

In my discipline, social matters are almost always related to the audience. If they wouldn't exist, our job would be an useless one. So, the social context is really important to the journalists. Why? Because they do their work in order to an especific kind of people get informed, that's the basics. However, the information journalists give is not always suitable. Some parts of the contents may deeply affect to some people in the audience. In this matter, it's essential to follow the knowledges about Ethics some time learned in the university. Althought there's a principle of freedom of speech involved in this matter, journalists must always inform with conscience and beware with the consequences their information could provoke in society or in one specific person.

In this case, I think the work of the editors of every media is essential. They can't allow some wrong information spreads and affects to somebody's reputation, for example.

Journalism is now a really "massive" career in Chile. You can study it in a lot of universities, many of which aren't even accredited to be runned. So Journalism is nowadays an "socially underrated" career because the education students of Journalism receive is not always the right one, and then, when they get a job, they do a poor quality work.

To resolve this problem, I think the Ministery of Education should closely supervise every university the career of Journalism is running in, in order to ensure the education that future journalists are receiving is the appropiated one.