College Kid Writes Stunning Exposé Blog! Read All About It!

Yellow journalism- a relic of a bygone era, when young newspapers screamed sensational headlines and the public lapped it up. The stories were generally overblown, consistently downplayed and overplayed key facts, and often could only be considered news under the broadest possible definition of the term. Who am I kidding? National TV these days fits the same bill. In the 24-7 news cycle we live in, we are bombarded in every direction from every network with the latest stories. And as has been the case for decades, news editors know that big headlines sell.

Yellow journalism- now in color.

This is not to say that journalism today is all like journalism then. Standards have tightened- we hold our newsmen to a higher standard of truth, and fact checking blasts through outright lies like a sneeze through wet Kleenex. But the compulsion to take the significant and make it sensational, in a frantic bid to get higher ratings or more web traffic, is only undermining the hard work true journalists do.

You know, this type of work.

Using interviews, telling stories to supplement the facts, digging for every detail- this is what good journalists are capable of doing. Thorough investigations of stories and leads can turn a dull story into a fleshed-out article capable of influencing and informing public opinion. They can tell a compelling, informative story without resorting to sensationalism or blowing things out of proportion. There may not be the glamour of penning a headline that has the whole country seeing red. But it beats yellow.

Still, people don't always get things right. This site helps: http://factcheck.org/