I've always known I wanted to work in the media in some way. While choosing the general area of interest was easy for me, with there being such a wide range of possible career options within this field, I'm having a hard time choosing just one. After my internship with a minor league baseball team this past summer, I've been leaning toward a career in sports media lately. However, if I'm being honest, I know I change my mind far too often to really take that thought too seriously.
I've always been interested in the media, especially social media and how it's become a vital part of our daily lives. I, like most, was on MySpace when Facebook first came out. Being thirteen and preoccupied with my choosing my Top Friends (which caused unnecessary drama in my middle school life), picking the perfect song to play when you visited my page (though really, everyone hit pause on the music player as soon as they visited anyone's MySpace page), and experimenting with all the fun and annoying things I could now do with my extremely limited HTML knowledge, I thought Facebook was a stupid ripoff of MySpace that would never amount to anything.Still, I made a Facebook page due to my adolescent need to join every social media network possible to ensure I was always keeping up with the times. At first, I spent very little time on Facebook, but as I got older, I found myself spending less time on MySpace and more time on Facebook. Eventually, I deleted my MySpace page and officially migrated all of my social media activity to Facebook. Considering the joke MySpace is nowadays, I think it's safe to assume this is the way things went for a good portion of former MySpace users.
I've been on Twitter since early 2008, before it really took off as a major social media platform. I know thats the "hipster" thing to say... "I was using Twitter before it was cool," but it's true. It's most likely the only website I'll be able to have a username that consists of my first name alone. I know my name has a unique spelling, but I still consider my Twitter handle a huge accomplishment.
Lately, I've been fascinated with how social media seems to have completely replaced major news media outlets as my first source for breaking news. I hardly ever read the newspaper or watch the news anymore because I see the headlines all over Twitter and Facebook and just choose to do a little more research on the stories that catch my attention.
I do make a point to visit major news websites every so often just to make sure I'm aware of what's going on in the world around me. If I am resorting to a traditional news media outlet, I generally rely on CNN or CNN.com. It can sometimes be difficult to get objective news, as so many outlets try to put a conservative or liberal twist on what they do or do not report. I've found that CNN is generally fair, which makes them my go-to traditional news source.
As far as a non-traditional news source goes, I would have to say I probably spend what may be considered an unhealthy amount of time on BuzzFeed. I know most people only use BuzzFeed to take quizzes and read (and probably share) one of their thousands of relatable lists (i.e.: 25 Things All Basic White Girls Do During the Fall), but they also cover the news. They have news articles and videos in addition to all of their meme-worthy randomness. I've found that while most of their news coverage leans a bit to the left, I have much more fun reading the news when I can alternate between the heavy news stories and "24 Times Pug Tongues Just Could Not Be Contained."
I'm really looking forward to what I can learn from this class. It should be an interesting semester.
-Karleigh
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