Many people watched captivated on Thursday as what people thought was a 6-year-old boy trapped in a hot air balloon finally came down to the ground. People were and still are tweeting about it left and right. Most sites led people to believe the boy was trapped in the balloon, but if you watched the landing of the balloon, it didn’t look like authorities believed the boy was in fact in the balloon as they poked a hole in the balloon and started hitting it down.

illustration by Matt Hamm, courtesy of flickr.com

Also yesterday (actually as this balloon boy incident was going on), my class was participating in a Cover-it-live event with journalists from around the nation about how journalists should, can, and do use Twitter in their reporting stages and in general. Some people said they get great sources from being on Twitter, others questioned how reliable a source is on Twitter and still more were totally against using Twitter.

Twitter for me is a way to see what people are talking about and if I am interested in the topic, I research it more to really know what is going on. Just like the balloon boy twittering that went on. Many people did not know what they were talking about and stated opinions as facts. If I had just gone from what people were saying on Twitter for a story, I would not get my information correct.

This is why I do not think Twitter or Blogs for that matter will replace professional reporting and journalists, like some people are saying. Yes, people can learn about a subject and write about it through their social media of choice, but do they go out there and interview important people involved in the story to see what is really going on? Many of those who do what people are calling “citizen journalism” get much of their information from news sources in the first place.

I know journalism is going through a tough time right now, but I still believe it will pull through and be able to adapt to the technology-minded world. Call me an optimist, but I think there will still be a need for people to go to J-School and learn the ins and outs of journalism and reporting in the future. Just like people are trained to be teacher or a scientist, journalists are trained in what they do and follow guidelines that others who are not trained to do so do not, making them more qualified and reliable than a man on the street.

Interestingly enough, one of my BYU professors said this year the amount of applications for the print journalism emphasis was actually up from previous years.