Will evolving forms of journalism be an improvement?

Issue ten in the book “Taking sides” starts off by mentioning forms of participatory journalism such as the “explosion of voices,” described as independent news reporting and commentary from members all over the world through technologies such as web sites, blogs, digital newsletters, YouTube videos, etc. The purpose of having this kind of participatory journalism is so individuals can report and comment on news using their own opinion, whether they are positive or negative comments. In relation to participatory journalism is the idea of “networked journalism” where everyone shares facts, questions, answers, ideas, and perspectives in order to get the real story. This certainly shows that forms of journalism are evolving, where professionals and amateurs can put their ideas together through new advances in technology, but it doesn’t mean that it will improve our society. To support my opinion, Eran Ben-Porath in his article “Internal Fragmentation if the News: Television News in Dialogical Format and it consequences for journalism” brings up the idea of how the mass media is using a dialogic format versus the traditional practices. The idea is that the media who is supposed to be improving journalism is using conversations (the dialogical format) rather than reporting (the traditional practices) and is coming up with opinionated news rather than actual facts. In conclusion, will evolving forms of journalism be an improvement? For now I say no, because like Ben-Porath said, “Question asking is becoming the norm rather than fact checking,” and in my opinion, until the media can find the traditional practices of journalism, improvement in the evolving forms of journalism is what is still needed.