Journalism Essay

             What This Class Has Taught Me.
             The vital information I have learned to date about mass communication's history, evolution, and role has only affirmed my desire to choose newspaper/magazine as my concentration in journalism. The newspaper field basically entails newspaper reporting, feature writing, editing, magazine writing and even being a webmaster. I have a strong passion towards writing articles so obviously this concentration suits me well. There is no doubt; however, that the material taught helps me understand that life in journalism will be nowhere close to being a cakewalk.
             Early on in the Dominick text, two important points about the nature of mass communication were pounded into my head. The section actually has five points that are outlined but two of them I had not taken into account when picturing my career in print media. These two facts explain that mass communication has many gatekeepers and mass communication organizations are highly competitive. First off when Mr. Rosengard discussed the revelation of gatekeepers I was somewhat dumbfounded. I had never heard of gatekeepers so obviously this factor hadn't crossed my mind up until now. The nature of the gatekeeper is pretty disheartening if you really think about it. A writer could put in all the intellectual effort preparing his article and then, just like that his work can be zapped out of existence. Nevertheless, it's probably better finding out the roadblocks of gate keeping now than when on the job wondering why only two out the five articles I wrote made the print. Secondly, the competitiveness of mass media for profit mentioned in the chapter iterated into my mind. I was surprised to read about how many companies in print, television, and other mediums compete with each other in order to attract an audience. This idea helped me realized how a good newspaper writer earns his keep. If the writer writes an article so impressive that it attracts readers to his or her writing, then the newspaper or magazine receives the profit it hungers for.