Research Paper Brainstorm

“You all know that you’re going into a dying business?” my journalism professor chuckled as he surveyed the class. He continued into his lecture for the first day of Intro to News Media, and I was present but not listening. I would compare it to when Santa tells Ralphie in A Christmas Story that a Red Ryder BB gun could “shoot your eye out.” I did not want to believe it was true. Yet it very possibly could be.
              I love current events, am I a great anomaly? My journalism class was quite full, particularly so for an evening class. All my friends did not seem less informed, if anything they seemed more informed.  But my professor was telling me my passion is going to fall on deaf ears?
I am studying the most popular forms of news media because I want to know if what media consumers like in order to help fellow news media students know how to revive journalism in the future.
That's a big paper. So far, I can only thing of my own preferred forms of news media. I started looking at YouTube and found that the YouTube channels of MSNBC, BBC, CNN, and Fox News had a considerably smaller number of subscribers than even YouTube channels like The Young Turks, Phillip De Franco, and Last Week Tonight and only the latter has an actual spot on TV. The other two do not even print articles, they function solely on YouTube.
This is super curious to me. I wonder how many Americans have "cut the cord" and no longer watch television.
I believe this changes very little for students of journalism. Broadcasting skills and writing skills are still essential on YouTube and the internet in general. Student readers would only agree with my paper, and, like me, study the tiny nuance differences between broadcasting on television versus YouTube. It would just break my heart for a fellow student to study so hard only to join a dying cause.
My audience is a concerned one. These are students that have put effort and sleepless nights into covering the current events of their local town. To think that this valuable information will go on to be a mystery to the citizens who can change it shakes the foundation of journalism.

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