Journalism and the media as we know it have changed, but it’s still too early to understand the consequences.

Thomas Ritchie, born In Waterloo Iowa, shared his experience with the new age of journalism we’re entering.

Ritchie worked as a journalist for most of his professional career before making the jump to a career in marketing, he argues that “Journalism is not dead, it’s just a whole other beast”.

He explained that in recent years, opinion-based journalism has taken over, and that the market has not yet adjusted to having so many different sources.  Social media has made it so everyone has the ability to be a source of news, but people tend to treat their opinions as fact, with the line between the two becoming blurrier, journalists today need to be able to tell a story from a perspective.

Ritchie also said that he misses journalism a lot, he liked to affect change in his community and the different stories and people he came across while working. According to him, he left the industry because his newspaper was declining in circulation, and as a door opened in marketing, he didn’t hesitate to walk through it.

It’s important to note that, while journalism has changed, it is not dead. Independent journalism has grown too what is now a very populated market, with something for all sorts of audiences; “independent journalism is good and bad, it gives freedom to what you want to say, but it’s difficult to compete with big newspapers that have infinite resources.”